


Liquid Love

by greyapplegeek



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, Drama, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-22
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-05-22 12:51:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 52,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6080106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greyapplegeek/pseuds/greyapplegeek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hogwarts AU. Jongdae and Chanyeol are arch-enemies, and trying to outdo each other's malicious pranks is something they have been doing for years. That is until one of Jongdae's pranks goes horribly wrong, causing them both to reconsider their feelings for one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1: Instant Infatuation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> like a lot of people the harry potter books mean incredibly much to me, and i have loved them ever since i started reading the first one when i was about 6 or 7 years old. therefore i felt a bit nervous writing this, as i really wanted to do the universe justice. hopefully that'll be a good thing, because i put in loads of effort in this. haha.  
> this story will be in three parts, and it's a little winter/christmas themed since i wrote most of it around that time last year. hope you'll enjoy this!! ;v;

Jongdae was dangling in the air, a couple of metres above ground. Or, more specifically, he was hanging from a tree; his cloak was stuck to one of its branches. It was the beginning of December and most of the trees surrounding the school area had lost their leaves, exposing their bare branches to the cold air. Releasing a breath, Jongdae could swear that it turned into a cloud of white smoke when meeting with the freezing weather.

He considered his options as he observed the back of his obnoxious Gryffindor arch-enemy (and said enemy’s obnoxious Gryffindor friends) walking further and further away. Muttering a rather obscene ramble of words, Jongdae decided to slowly detach himself from his cloak, letting himself fall down and land ungracefully on his ass. Ouch.

Standing up, trying to wipe the dirt off of his hurt behind, he realised the cloak was too far up for him to reach. He took out his wand, directed it to the garment and said,

“ _Accio_.”

The cloak detached itself from the tree and landed swiftly in Jongdae’s waiting hands. While putting it on again, Jongdae turned towards the direction of the leaving figures, who were so far away by now that he almost couldn’t distinguish them from each other. He could still recognise who the tall silhouette in the middle belonged to, though. There was nothing he could do to keep his face from heating up in humiliation as he recalled the way the boy had appeared behind him with his usual group of friends, flinging him up a tree with a simple spell. The ringing of the loud, ugly laughter that followed was still haunting Jongdae’s eardrums, and at that moment he didn’t want anything else as much as he wanted revenge.

Knowing that it probably wouldn’t be a good idea to run after the group and attack his nemesis from the back, Jongdae started plotting for another payback. Already beginning to get ideas, he smiled slightly to himself. He would get Chanyeol this time.

 

Jongdae didn’t exactly know why he and Chanyeol Park were still doing this. It had started way back in their first year, when Chanyeol had accidentally set fire to Jongdae’s almost-finished essay during a lesson in Charms and Jongdae had to start anew.

Jongdae was usually rather nice to others and easy to forgive people for their mistakes, but there was _something_ about Chanyeol Park that rubbed Jongdae the wrong way. So during a while after that, Jongdae relentlessly made fun of Chanyeol’s accent whenever he could (Chanyeol hadn’t lived in the UK for very long before he started his first year at Hogwarts - while Jongdae, even though he also had Korean ancestry, had lived here his entire life). It was a very mean thing of him to do, but he wasn’t regretful when Chanyeol proved to be just as mean and in return began making fun of Jongdae’s poor broomstick flying skills during their first lesson in the subject. That led to Jongdae casting a spell on Chanyeol that made his already big ears grow even bigger, he even had to be taken to the hospital wing since Jongdae didn’t know how to fix it. A day after that, Chanyeol publicly threw a Dungbomb at him, and ever since then, they’d been at each other’s throats, playing pranks that became worse and worse with time. Even now when they were in their sixth year. Really, Jongdae’s dislike of the other had just become stronger with the years. The mere thought of Chanyeol’s face, the huge eyes, wide obnoxious smile and pointy ears, made Jongdae want to punch it. But he was more sophisticated than that. It was like a competition; they had to perform an act of revenge on the other that was even worse than what had been done before. And Jongdae was not losing against that idiot. No way.

 

That weekend the weather became even worse, with storm-like winds and, again, freezing weather. Not literally freezing though, it was still a few degrees above zero and instead of snowing it rained. That did not stop a whole pack of happy students from visiting Hogsmeade, however. Jongdae had constructed the perfect plan in his head, and it involved getting some goods from the Hogsmeade shops, so the timing was ideal.

He left the school grounds with a group of his usual friends, and when all of them were visiting Honeydukes he sneaked out, knowing his friends were too occupied with the sweets to notice his absence for the next couple of minutes.

He soon reached his destination, the joke shop that had opened a few years ago. Luckily, there were not a lot of people in the shop at the time he entered, which meant less people to see him purchase what he came there for.

The joke shop was a paradise for a prankster like Jongdae, he had explored it many times. However, he was not able to buy many of their items. He didn’t have too much money and he knew his parents wouldn’t be happy about him spending it on stuff like that… but the main concern was the fact that the majority of things for sale in the shop were not allowed at Hogwarts. At all. Therefore he had countless of times strolled around the shop, longingly staring at the items on the shelves, knowing that he couldn’t bring them back to the school area. Today, however, he was going to do that. He had a plan.

Jongdae headed for perhaps the only corner of the shop that he hadn’t really visited, an obnoxiously pink one. Not that Jongdae had anything in particular against the colour pink, but he knew what was displayed in that corner and he had never had the use for it before. Until today, that is. He was going to buy a love potion.

There were bigger and smaller bottles displayed, and of course, none of them were permanent. Jongdae grabbed a smaller one, they were supposed to work for 24 hours and he figured it would be more humane than a week.

Eyeing the price, Jongdae realised that it was rather expensive. It would be worth it though, he knew that, so he hurried to the check-out with the small bottle of light pink liquid in hand.

“You know that these are not allowed at Hogwarts, right?” asked the cashier and Jongdae nodded.

“Yes. I am not bringing it there. I’m not using it myself”, he said with his sincerest smile. Because of the rising popularity of joke articles in the recent years, there were now spells by the gates of the school that disposed of all the potentially dangerous stuff students would bring back. Jongdae learnt this the hard way in his third year.

He soon made his way back to the crowded Honeydukes; his friends were still there as if nothing had happened. Jongdae immediately grabbed a pair of Chocoballs, as he knew those were Chanyeol’s favourites, and some Sugarquills for himself.

After paying Jongdae sneaked out again, hiding in the alley between Honeydukes and the neighbouring house, making sure to stand under the roof of one of the houses to avoid getting hit by the rain. Then he carefully opened the Chocoballs in half, and proceeded to empty the bottle of love potion in the filling of strawberry mousse and clotted cream, mixing it in. The potion was strong, so the contents of the small bottle only consisted of about ten drops.

Closing the Chocoballs again, Jongdae put them back into their package and disposed of the now empty bottle. This was how he would be able to smuggle love potion into the castle.

 

Jongdae arrived back to Hogwarts later that afternoon, after spending the rest of his trip to Hogsmeade with his friends. His trick of spiking the Chocoballs with love potion apparently worked, as he wasn’t affected by the protecting spells by the gates. Well in the dorms, Jongdae constructed a letter, trying to write with a handwriting as different as possible from his own.

_Dear Chanyeol,_  
_I am a girl in a year below you, you’ve probably never noticed me, but I’m a big fan of you! I think you’re very handsome and nice, and I always root for you during Quidditch even though we’re not from the same house, haha… I am still too shy to tell you my name, but please accept these gifts (I happen to know that you love Chocoballs, so I bought you some during my visit to Hogsmeade today)!_  
_Love,_  
_?_

Jongdae re-read what he had written and cringed. He couldn’t believe he just wrote something like that. It would probably work, though. Chanyeol seemed to be like that, a person who could do anything if he received enough praise.

All the preparations for his plan were now complete, and it was soon time for him to carry through with it. Jongdae left the Slytherin common room in the dungeons and made his way to the classroom where they usually had Charms. He knew Chanyeol was going to have detention with their Charms teacher this late afternoon, since he had overheard it two days ago. It wasn’t uncommon for any of them to have detention, they both caused… disruptions every now and then, but this time only Chanyeol had detention. Jongdae’s plan was to place the Chocoballs right outside the classroom for Chanyeol to find, the latter would probably be stupid enough to eat them.

The love potion worked in a way that the first person the victim lay their eyes on, they would fall intensely in love with (for 24 hours, that is). And in Chanyeol’s case it would be their small, bearded, old Charms professor. Jongdae couldn’t help but snicker at the mere thought of the idea. Chanyeol would really humiliate himself during the next twenty-four hours.

Hearing footsteps in the corridor, Jongdae quickly placed the pair of Chocoballs and the letter outside the door to the classroom, and hid himself behind a corner. It would be hilarious to watch how Chanyeol would react, he just couldn’t miss it. His heart beat faster as the owner of the footsteps approached him, this had to work, it had to be Chanyeol…

The footsteps did belong to Chanyeol, and Jongdae sighed in relief. He didn’t really know who else would be walking through the corridor at this time, but if it was a teacher who noticed the sweets by the door he was in real trouble. But it was not, and Jongdae watched Chanyeol reach the Chocoballs, pick up the letter in curiosity, and start reading it.

Jongdae suddenly became a bit nervous. What if he overestimated Chanyeol’s stupidity, what if the Gryffindor was smart enough to see through his trick, what if all of Jongdae’s efforts had gone to waste?

However, Jongdae yet again released a sigh of relief - a quiet one - when he spotted Chanyeol smiling widely and picking up one of the Chocoballs. Score. Seems like he was as dumb as Jongdae’d thought.

Chanyeol ate the first Chocoball in no time at all, and watching him devouring the second one Jongdae felt a bit hungry. He hadn’t eaten for a long time, and those Chocoballs looked rather delicious. So he couldn’t really help when his stomach started grumbling. Loudly.

Chanyeol stopped eating as it happened, and Jongdae held his breath, trying not to make a sound. Of course, his body betrayed him again and his belly released another noise, this one a tiny bit more quiet, but unfortunately still audible to both him and Chanyeol.

“Who… Who’s there?” the latter asked loudly, and Jongdae hid completely behind the wall of the corner, now he couldn’t see Chanyeol anymore, but he could hear footsteps. _Shit_. Panicking, he attempted to turn around and run, but tripped over his own feet and landed face first into the floor. Also, right into Chanyeol’s view.

Looking up, Jongdae saw Chanyeol standing about a metre away, surprise painting his face.

“Hey! What are you-” Chanyeol started, but suddenly his voice softened, making him sound more curious than angry. “… doing here?”

Jongdae scrambled to his feet as Chanyeol stared at him, wide-eyed, looking rather… shocked? Or… something else, an emotion Jongdae couldn’t read.

“Um, are you okay?” Jongdae asked as he walked a little closer to Chanyeol, waving in front of his face. Chanyeol was still staring at him as if he hadn’t seen him before in his entire life, and looking closer, Jongdae could see how the pupils of Chanyeol’s eyes had widened in size, making him look as if he was… into him. That’s when Jongdae realised. Holy _shit_. Chanyeol _was_ into him. Jongdae had been the one he’d seen first, after all.

…At that moment, Jongdae wished he had the power to turn back time. His plan had taken a different turn, and he was absolutely and royally _screwed_.

“A-ah, Jongdae, I, um, I haven’t seen you in a long time…” Chanyeol finally said, somewhat awkwardly. Jongdae swallowed. He hated how Chanyeol always referred to him as his full first name. He was the _only one_ who did that. The teachers and the students Jongdae wasn’t close to called him by his family name, and his friends usually called him JD or just Dae (most of them pronouncing it like ‘day’). Chanyeol was the only one he knew (besides his parents, that is) who would call him his full first name, and pronounce it correctly too. It irritated Jongdae, because he always referred to Chanyeol as 'Park’ whenever he spoke to or about him, wanting to keep the distance that came with the contempt they had for each other.

“Er, we actually met yesterday. You used a spell to hang me up in a tree”, he stated matter-of-factly. Chanyeol looked very taken aback.

“I did? Why did I do that? I am so sorry, I, um… I didn’t mean to hurt you, I am really sorry…” he said, looking genuinely sorry, not breaking eye contact. Jongdae felt very uncomfortable. He hadn’t seen this side of Chanyeol before. A nice side. Of course, Chanyeol was usually nice to his friends and, well, most other people, but not him. Maybe because Jongdae was never nice back. Huh.

“Is there anything I can do to make you feel better? To apologise properly?” Chanyeol’s eyes were almost shiny, and his eyelids seemed to become heavier and heavier. Looking at him from under his eyelashes, Chanyeol raised a hand and ran his fingers softly on the side of Jongdae’s face. Jongdae felt said face burn as if Chanyeol had cast a fire spell on it, yet he couldn’t do anything. If his face was on fire, then the rest of his body was the opposite, frozen to the ground, powerless.

“You know, Jongdae…”, Chanyeol continued with cheeks rosier than the love potion, letting his thumb slide slowly against Jongdae’s cheekbone, “I don’t know how to say this, b-but… you’re r-really beautiful-”

Just as Chanyeol took a step closer, the door to the classroom opened, revealing their professor.

“Oh! Park, there you are-” he started but cut himself off as he took in the situation. “…Kim? I’m sorry, am I interrupting something? Er, Park, your detention is starting, so… If you may…”

Their professor pointed to the classroom and Jongdae finally regained enough consciousness to back away from Chanyeol.

“Yeah, Park, go have detention”, he said rather harshly. Chanyeol looked at him disappointedly but still obeyed and followed his teacher into the classroom.

When Jongdae finally was left alone, he slowly wandered back to the dungeons. He didn’t even make it all the way, stopping in the middle of a corridor and sitting down on a bench. Burying his face in his hands, Jongdae released a deep, shaky sigh. _This wasn’t supposed to happen._

He rocked himself gently from side to side, trying to calm down. This was really a nightmarish scenario. His prank had failed, and he was going to be facing the consequences of it the following _twenty-four hours_. Fuck. It would not only be bothersome for him to have Chanyeol head-over-heels for him for a day, it would be humiliating him in front of his classmates too. Maybe he could fake a cold tomorrow to skip classes. But what if Chanyeol started going around, running his mouth, talking about him in an embarrassing way? He couldn’t let that happen either. So what could he do?

Jongdae suddenly remembered that his professor in Divination had told him something around a month ago. From looking into his crystal ball and comparing it with a diagram over the movements of the Moon she predicted that this week something horrible was bound to happen to him. Maybe, this was it! Jongdae shuddered. He was in for bad luck. However, it did not exactly fit what the teacher had said, because it would apparently lead to “his deepest secret getting exposed”, and Jongdae didn’t even know what his deepest secret was.

Sighing again, Jongdae got up to his feet and continued his walk. Upon reaching the dungeons, he headed immediately for bed. Whatever he chose to do tomorrow, he knew it would be a long day.

 

Jongdae woke up early the next day, and since he couldn’t manage to go back to sleep he started to think. About today, about yesterday, about what a failure his prank had been. He suddenly remembered that time one of Chanyeol’s tricks had failed, feeling a bit relieved over not having been the only one.

It had happened in their fourth year, and Jongdae had just left the main gates of the castle when Chanyeol appeared behind him.

“Hey, Jongdae! Check this out!” he shouted obnoxiously and before Jongdae could react Chanyeol had uttered some kind of curse. In less than a second Jongdae had felt something rain on him, something that wasn’t water but larger than that, heavier. Not liquid. And brown. A moment after that it had stopped, but Jongdae was covered in cockroaches. Dead cockroaches.

Jongdae had given Chanyeol a glare, then he tried simply shrugging them off, having expected something worse. Chanyeol had looked at him in disbelief.

“Aren’t you freaked out? Okay, they were supposed to be alive, but… still. They’re cockroaches…?”  
Jongdae just shook his head, although he had to admit that it would be a lot more uncomfortable with actual living bugs. Chanyeol had looked at him with disappointment not very well hidden in his eyes. However, Jongdae had just walked away in a cool manner, telling Chanyeol to clean up the mess after himself.

Jongdae could not help but smile at the memory. Chanyeol had clearly been the one to embarrass himself that day. One of his faults was that he was always more spontaneous, most of times surprise attacking Jongdae with some curse he’d taught himself. It was probably the kind of foolish rashness Gryffindors were known for, acting before thinking and doing everything in a careless and impetuous manner. Jongdae, on the other hand, liked to use more carefully planned out and prepared pranks. And in spite of the fact that Chanyeol had failed, Jongdae still got his revenge when he during a Potions lesson three days after that had replaced Chanyeol’s doxy eggs with puffer-fish eyes, making Chanyeol’s potion swell over the edges of the cauldron and cover the entire floor in a sticky, foul-smelling liquid. Their teacher, who was usually very fond of Chanyeol, had not been happy.

With those memories in mind, Jongdae felt a bit more optimistic about the day he was about to face. He knew that even though his prank yesterday might have failed, he would still get a proper revenge on Chanyeol sooner or later. He was just going to survive twelve more hours or so.

 

Jongdae was less optimistic when he went to have breakfast later that morning. Because just as he reached the Slytherin table he felt a presence behind him. One that usually did not pester him during breakfast, or during any meal for that matter.

“J-Jongdae, good morning!” Chanyeol patted him on the back, smile brighter than the sun; Jongdae almost had to shield his eyes. “I was wondering if I could sit with you today…?”

Jongdae already spotted some of his housemates glancing at him and Chanyeol curiously, so he felt like he didn’t have a choice.

“Uh, actually I was just leaving, so…” he said abruptly, grabbing a breakfast muffin from the table to eat on his way out of the hall. Chanyeol immediately did the same, and Jongdae realised it would be hard to shake him off today.

“Y'know what, Jongdae…” Chanyeol started as they were walking to whatever direction Jongdae had chosen, he just wanted to escape and didn’t really have a plan in mind. Jongdae did not answer and after looking expectantly at him for about eight seconds, Chanyeol gave up and started speaking again.

“I had trouble sleeping tonight. There was a thing I thought of, and, could… could we go somewhere more, uh, private? I have to tell you something.”

Chanyeol’s unfortunate face was a bright pink colour and Jongdae couldn’t help but think of the equally pink shelf in the joke shop and how he regretted ever going there. Also, he was pretty sure he knew what Chanyeol wanted to tell him, so he had to come up with something fast.

“Actually, don’t we have lessons soon? I have Herbology, what about you?”

Chanyeol pouted as if he were a three-year-old. Ridiculous.

“That’s too bad, I have Astronomy.”

“In the daytime?”

“It’s theoretical. I have practical on Wednesday nights. But I’m sure we share some lessons later today! Besides, there are still forty minutes until classes start.”

“Yeah, but… I have to prepare a project before this lesson and I can’t be disturbed. You can go hang out with your friends instead”, Jongdae tried, wanting to have as little as possible to do with the enamoured Chanyeol today. The latter looked surprised at the mention of his friends, as if he had forgotten about their existence.

“Oh… yeah.”

“Yes. I’ll be going now.”

“Um, okay, bye! Oh, wait!” Chanyeol exclaimed. Jongdae, stupidly enough, stopped in his tracks.  
“You have something…”

Chanyeol licked his thumb and wiped it against a spot on Jongdae’s forehead, near one of his eyebrows. Again, Jongdae was frozen at his spot on the floor, not knowing how to react. After a second that felt more like an hour, Chanyeol removed his finger and smiled widely at Jongdae.

“Done! I’ll see you later!” he said in an almost sing-songy voice and turned around, directing his long legs back to the Great Hall. Jongdae stood silently for a couple of seconds, still not having taken in what exactly had happened.

Finally,

“Ew!” he exclaimed to himself and ran towards the bathrooms to wash that particular spot on his forehead.

 

Jongdae couldn’t really concentrate during Herbology. His mind was occupied with other things, thoughts of his stupid giant of an arch-enemy. Jongdae was worried Chanyeol might do something weird because of his new obsession. There was nothing he could do about it, though. Except maybe wait for the class to end.

One thing he managed to do was to tell his friends (at least those of them who were in his year) about what had happened the previous evening. They had after all already started to get suspicious, and he had to tell them the reason to why Chanyeol would follow him like a mosquito follows light today.

Like the heartless people they were, they just laughed at him when he told them. Okay, they seemed a _bit_ sorry for him too, but they mostly found it funny (Jongdae had to admit he probably would’ve too if it were someone else than him). He told them about his worries concerning Chanyeol and him running his mouth, and they just told him to seek the Gryffindor up after their lesson and talk to him. Simple as that.

 

Jongdae did not even have to look for Chanyeol when his lesson ended, because the other stood right outside the classroom, waiting for him like a dog waiting for its owner.

“Jongdae, I can’t wait anymore, I have to tell you something-” Chanyeol’s deep voice exclaimed before Jongdae had the chance to even open his mouth. He then grabbed Jongdae’s arm, pretty much dragging him away to the nearest “private place” he could find. At least that’s what Jongdae suspected he was doing.

Turns out he was right, because they soon ended up in the rather cramped storage room for Potions. It consisted of a tiny square in the middle surrounded by shelves building walls around them, filled to the brim with bottles varying in both sizes and contents. It was a great place to visit if you were interested in Potions, which Jongdae was, but right now it mostly felt like a prison.

Jongdae managed to release his arm from Chanyeol’s grip, the latter looking a bit wounded which Jongdae chose to ignore.

“Er, well, I’m sorry but I have to tell you something… I couldn’t even concentrate during Astronomy, my mind was filled with other things and… well… how do I say this…” Chanyeol trailed off and Jongdae decided to intensely gaze at one of the bottles behind him, containing something strangely yellow. He knew what was coming, and it didn’t make him too comfortable.

Chanyeol bit his plump lower lip and looked down, before lifting his gaze to Jongdae again.

“Don’t be too shocked or anything, but… I think I’m in love with you.”

Jongdae knew he was going to say that, yet he still drew a sharp breath when he did. He then had a small inner discussion if “Yes, I know” would be an appropriate answer, but decided it wasn’t.

“Uhh… That’s… nice and all, but, uh”, Jongdae uttered, not really knowing what to say in this situation. Chanyeol shook his head.

“You don’t believe me. Here, feel it yourself, feel what state you put me in”, he said and grabbed Jongdae’s arm for a second time, directing the hand to his chest. “My heart’s beating like crazy for you, you don’t even know-”

“I- I- I- I believe you - don’t worry!” Jongdae stammered, trying to retake control over his own hand, thinking that Chanyeol’s chest was one of the last places in the world where he would like to put it.

“But how do _you_ feel? Can you accept my feelings?” Chanyeol continued, and Jongdae felt himself starting to panic, what would he even do? How could he break it to the guy that his supposed love for him was the product of a prank gone wrong, a love potion bought at the joke shop?

“I’m, er, I…”

Chanyeol chose that moment to take a few steps closer to Jongdae.

“I couldn’t even sleep last night… All I could do was thinking of you. You have no idea how much I want you, it almost hurts”, he said and Jongdae swallowed, now this was creeping him out. He recalled a disclaimer by the shelf in the joke shop saying something about love potions not actually creating real love, as it was impossible to artificially create something like that, instead making the victim have more of an obsession. He could understand what it meant now.

“So… you know how I feel, but… _what about you?_ ” Chanyeol persisted, and Jongdae looked around, trying to think of a way to escape the situation. Once again taking in the room he was in, Jongdae got an idea. With all these different Potion ingredients at his disposal, there had to be some way to cure Chanyeol. All he needed was guidance. And a quick way to escape this situation.

“Well…” Jongdae tried his hardest to gaze flirtatiously at Chanyeol, something he never thought he’d do in his entire life but here he was. This was (hopefully) a situation unlikely to repeat itself.

“If you close your eyes… I might tell you”, he said, looking at Chanyeol from below his eyelashes, internally cringing. He was probably doing a really crappy job of flirting with the other but he was sure Chanyeol’s sense of judgement wasn’t the best today anyway.

“A-ah”, Chanyeol simply answered, Jongdae had no idea what he meant by that, but at least he closed his eyes.

It was easier to look at Chanyeol when he was not looking back at him, Jongdae realised. The taller’s cheeks were even pinker than his lips, which were formed into an expectant smile. It was almost pleasant to watch, a nice expression. Different from the annoyingly smug smile Chanyeol usually had when talking to Jongdae. And Jongdae had thought the shocked and humiliated look whenever he was the victim of one of Jongdae’s pranks was his favourite expression of Chanyeol’s, but this was… another thing.

“You… like me back?” Chanyeol then uttered, and at that Jongdae kind of returned back to reality. Had he really been… _admiring_ Chanyeol’s face? No, he was just surprised to see such a different expression from him, that’s all. Jongdae cleared his throat.

“You’ll see… Just keep your eyes closed”, he said and Chanyeol nodded. That was the cue he needed; Jongdae slowly backed towards the door, silently pressed the handle down and _dashed_ off, escaping.

Now he had to spend his newly acquired freedom wisely. And he knew just what to do.

He reached one of the more populated corridors of the school and upon seeing a slightly familiar Slytherin girl, he stopped her.

“Excuse me, are you a fifth year?” he asked, and the girl looked at him curiously.

“Yes, I am, but why-”

“Do you know where I can find Kyungsoo Do? It’s pretty urgent.”

“Hmm…”, the girl started, “I just had a lesson with him, Transfiguration, so he might still be over there”, she said and pointed towards the direction of the usual Transfiguration classroom. Jongdae nodded. After thanking the girl, he ran off again.

Kyungsoo Do was a housemate of his, in a year below him. He was a rather quiet kid, kept to himself a lot. Jongdae didn’t know him very well, but he knew he was one of the best students the school had ever had when it came to potion making. If Kyungsoo didn’t know what could cure the effects of a love potion, nobody did.

Jongdae found Kyungsoo on his way from the Transfiguration classroom, carrying a thick book and looking down at the floor while passing by crowds of students. Kyungsoo was short, even shorter than Jongdae, but he made better use of his shortness as he still looked intimidating. Unlike Jongdae.

“Hey! Do, right?” Jongdae asked, stopping Kyungsoo in his tracks. The latter’s already wide eyes widened some more, looking surprised.

“Yes, that’s me. Kim?”

Jongdae nodded. They had talked before, but not a lot of times. Nothing less ordinary than the courteous “Good morning"s and the trivial "Do you know what’s for lunch today"s.

"Uh, I have to ask you something…” Jongdae started, but cut himself off to move them to a corner instead of standing in the middle of the corridor, as to not block the way for the end-of-term-stressed students passing them by in full speed.

“So, you’re good at Potions, right?”

Kyungsoo gazed at him with an unreadable expression.

“Yes… I suppose so. I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty good.”

Jongdae smiled at the confidence of the younger.

“Great. Um… so, I kind of need your help, or, well…” he then said, feeling a bit embarrassed over what he was about to ask. Kyungsoo would definitely think it was a strange question, and start to suspect things.

“Do you… Do you know how to cure the effects of a love potion?”

“… You mean like an antidote?” Jongdae still could not read Kyungsoo’s expression, but it might have been because of the fact that he couldn’t look Kyungsoo directly in the eyes. The embarrassment was that strong.

“Yeah… I guess.”

“Hmm… There is one I can think of; it has only three ingredients but they’re rather difficult to get your hands on. Wiggentree twigs, Castor oil, and let’s see… I think you’ll also need some extract of a Gurdyroot. This only works for the Amortentia though, is that the love potion you want to cure?”

Jongdae was impressed by Kyungsoo’s knowledge. He had heard about it but hadn’t seen it for real, in action, so to speak. He sighed though, upon realising that the antidote might not work on Chanyeol.

“No… it’s one of those tiny love potions from the joke shop in Hogsmeade…”

“Oh. Then I don’t really know. I think it would be the best to contact the shop or the producer in that case”, Kyungsoo said.

“Ah, then I might as well wait it out”, Jongdae said, feeling himself give up.

“Why are you even asking this?”

“Uhh… Well… I… A prank went wrong and the guy likes me instead of the person he was supposed to like…” Jongdae explained as simply as possible.

“Oh.”

“It sucks.”

“I can understand that”, Kyungsoo answered, and Jongdae finally managed to look into the other boy’s eyes again. Or, at least, look at his face.

“Ah! Jongdae, there you are!” came a voice from behind him, seemingly out of nowhere; Jongdae almost jumped right into Kyungsoo in surprise. It was a deep voice. Chanyeol. God damn it.

“I was looking for you, you just disappeared! Were you too shy? Don’t worry, I-” Chanyeol continued, coming closer but stopping when he spotted Kyungsoo.

“Oh. Who are you?” Chanyeol asked in a rather rude manner, at the same time squeezing himself against Jongdae, putting an arm around his shoulder.

“I’m Kyungsoo Do, fifth year”, Kyungsoo said suspiciously, probably also having noticed Chanyeol’s sudden change of emotion.

“Are you a… friend of Jongdae’s?” Chanyeol then asked, almost interrogating the poor boy. Jongdae didn’t feel too bad for Kyungsoo though, he was in a much worse situation himself. Especially when Chanyeol started stroking his cheek with the back of his hand in a possessive manner. Jongdae felt like sinking through the fucking floor.

“We’re… we’re simply housemates”, Kyungsoo replied, looking a bit taken aback. Jongdae sighed and elbowed Chanyeol lightly.

“Park, let go of me”, he said and turned to Kyungsoo, whispering, “You see what I have to go through?”

Kyungsoo nodded while Chanyeol disappointedly detached his arm from Jongdae’s shoulder, still standing just as close to him as before, though.

“… Yeah. I thought you two weren’t on, uh, good terms?”

“Well, it’s gonna be even worse after this”, Jongdae predicted. And yes, a lot of the other students of the school knew about his and Chanyeol’s rival-like relationship. They had noticed many of their pranks, after all they were not very subtle at times.

“A piece of advice”, Kyungsoo uttered silently, leaning forward again to whisper to Jongdae, “if I were in your shoes, I would erase his memory after the potion stops working. It’s pretty easy to just delete that specific part of his memory, I think. Otherwise he’ll go around remembering everything, and I suppose you don’t want that, because I wouldn’t.”

Jongdae nodded, and decided to go when he felt Chanyeol tugging at his arm. Thanking Kyungsoo for at least trying to help, he gave in and followed Chanyeol to wherever it was that he wanted to go.

 

“Why were you talking to that one guy? You were even whispering”, asked Chanyeol as he dragged Jongdae through the corridor, sounding a bit sour.

“It’s none of your business”, Jongdae shortly answered, struggling to keep up with the steps of Chanyeol’s ridiculously long legs. This whole obsession thing was getting on his nerves. Couldn’t Chanyeol leave him alone for one second?

“It might be”, Chanyeol muttered, tugging Jongdae’s arm a bit harder. “What if you like him?”

“I don’t- That’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard, I’ve almost never talked to him before and I don’t know anything about him. What makes you think I like him? Actually, what makes you think I like guys at all?” Jongdae snapped, massaging his temples with his free hand. Yup, this was _really_ getting on his nerves.

Chanyeol’s eyes widened.

“I don’t know, I-” he started, slowing down his pace a little, “I have to at least hope you like guys. I mean… for you to like _me_. Don’t… don’t you like me back…?”

Chanyeol stopped, and Jongdae noticed that they were now standing outside the classroom they had History of Magic in. Oh, right, they shared their next class. _And_ it was a double.

…Yay.

Chanyeol turned around a bit so that he was facing Jongdae, putting one of his hands on the shorter’s shoulder. Luckily, there seemed to be no one else around to witness their conversation. Jongdae looked down, inspecting the ground, avoiding Chanyeol’s gaze.

“You… you never told me before, you just ran away… Were you too shy, or… don’t you like me at all? Is it because we always fight? Because I play pranks on you? Because of that incident in our first year?”

As Jongdae was gazing intensely at the floor he couldn’t see Chanyeol’s facial expression (but perhaps that was a good thing). He did not sound very thrilled, though. Jongdae was surprised he remembered the accident from back then that started it all. He thought he was the only one who did, that Chanyeol had forgotten about it a long time ago.

“Well, I like you, sure, but I don’t…” Jongdae uttered, trying to satisfy Chanyeol so he wouldn’t be upset. He wasn’t sure if he could lie so blatantly to Chanyeol and tell him he liked him _romantically_ , though. He had a limit and that was it.

“You don’t…?” Chanyeol repeated as a question, and his tone sounded so small that Jongdae _had_ to look up at him.

Bad idea. Chanyeol’s big eyes were wide and shiny, as if he was about to break out in tears any second, and his lips were almost _trembling_. Shit. He looked extremely vulnerable, Jongdae had never seen him like that before. It made him shiver. What would he do if Chanyeol actually started to cry? Jongdae was not good at these things. And he definitely did not want to see that face anymore. It did something with him in a strange way, like, he got such a weird feeling from looking at it. He felt almost protective, even. Of his arch-enemy. How did that even happen?!

“I don’t… Uh… I do like you a lot, but I don’t think I’m ready to admit that to everyone yet. So, um, can we keep it a secret? For now at least?” Jongdae stammered, feeling bad for lying but he could not have Chanyeol’s heart breaking in a public place in the middle of the day. There were only about eight hours left, he could put up with this. Especially if he actually got Chanyeol to shut up in front of other people.

“You… You do like me back, then!! I… I’m so happy, I can’t even believe-” Chanyeol exclaimed, smile reappearing on his face. Before Jongdae could even react, Chanyeol bounced forward and threw his arms around him, making him stumble backwards from the impact. Chanyeol then laughed happily and Jongdae struggled to not be crushed by the giant.

“C-can you release me?!” he tried to ask, voice coming out muffled because of his face currently being squeezed against the tall frame of the other boy. It was warm, almost cosy, though… Jongdae hadn’t really hugged someone who was that much bigger than him before, and it felt kind of comforting... _Anyway_ , Chanyeol seemed to have heard him and slowly let go.

“As I said, I’m still not ready to let others know about my feelings for you, so… could you not do that in front of people?”

Chanyeol looked around briefly.

“There’s no one else here, though.”

“You can’t be sure of that.”

“Okay, whatever. I’m still too excited that you like me back! Can I…” Chanyeol trailed off, cheeks turning into a pretty shade of rosé.

“Can you what?”

“Can I… Can I kiss you, then? If I do it sneakily?” Chanyeol asked, fidgeting a little, gazing at Jongdae with an expectant smile on his face. Jongdae felt his face heat up in a similar way to Chanyeol’s.

“Wha- No! Not _here_. I mean, if you…” Jongdae said, and then… he came up with a _master plan_. “If you leave me alone this entire lesson, and keep quiet about me - basically ignore me! I-I’ll let you kiss me afterwards.”

This was a perfect way of getting Chanyeol to do what Jongdae wanted. As long as he got some kind of reward, then… everything would be fine.

“Yes! I’ll do that!” Chanyeol immediately agreed, looking as if he’d won the bloody lottery or something, letting Jongdae know how incredibly easy it was to get Chanyeol to do as he says. “I was just gonna keep from talking with, or about you, that’s all?”

“Yeah, just ignore me. Actually, don’t even look at me. People will be really suspicious otherwise.”

“Oh… okay. It’ll be a bit hard but I’ll do my best! Although… I might’ve already talked a bit about you with some of my friends…”

“You have?!”

“I m-mean… I really like you a lot so it’s difficult not to! You’re the only thing I can think about lately… ha.. ha”, Chanyeol laughed awkwardly, and Jongdae tried to keep himself from freaking out.

“What did you tell them?!”

“I don’t exactly remember, something about you looking… cute today and how I was gonna hang out with you and… Ah, sorry, I can’t really recall what I said in detail”, Chanyeol explained. Jongdae sighed deeply. Again, he was in trouble.

“You don’t… hate me, right?”

“No, I don’t hate you… I just need to talk to your friends a little…” Jongdae muttered. How would he even cover up this? He supposed the only thing he could do was to explain to them why Chanyeol was acting so strangely. What had actually happened. That’d mean that Chanyeol’s friends would get to know about his screwup, but… he did not know how else he was going to solve this.

“They’ll probably be here soon, since there’s not much time until we start”, Chanyeol assumed, and after waiting a couple of minutes Jongdae could spot a group of students dressed in red and gold. They were not even late. Incredible.

“Excuse me, could I, uh, talk to you guys a little? I need to explain something”, he said when they were close enough. He was met with curious and a bit suspicious glances.

“… Alright”, answered one of them, a girl Jongdae could vaguely recognise as Amber Liu, a Muggleborn Gryffindor in their year.

“Park, can you step away for a while? I have to talk to them in private”, he then asked Chanyeol, who looked disappointed but still obeyed, probably having his reward in mind.

“Okay… So”, Jongdae started when Chanyeol was out of hearing distance, clearing his throat. “I… guess you’ve noticed that Park is acting a bit strangely… He’s been talking about me, right?”

“Well, yes…” said a brown-haired guy in the group that Jongdae didn’t know the name of (he had never talked to him before). Amber then started speaking.

“You’ve done something to him, huh? Because he hasn’t been able to shut up about you, and… yeah. You’ve probably noticed it yourself, he’s been hanging out with you more than with us today!”

“Yeah. Um. It’s because… It was a prank that went a bit, uh, wrong. I tricked him into eating Chocoballs spiked with love potion before his detention yesterday, he was supposed to fall for the professor but he accidentally saw me before that, and… yeah. He, um, likes me. For today.”

Jongdae looked down while explaining, fiddling with his sleeves. This was so humiliating. At least, Amber started laughing (while a guy in the back frightened Jongdae by looking like he wanted punch him in the face).

“Damn. So that’s why. You really fucked up, Kim”, she said after having stopped laughing. Jongdae felt a bit relieved. The thing about both his and Chanyeol’s friends was that none of them really aided them in their fights against each other. They usually liked to watch their pranks unfold, but they did not do anything themselves. It was a thing between him and Chanyeol, and only them. Jongdae had just been a bit nervous that Chanyeol’s friends would be enraged by what he had done (they were on Chanyeol’s “side” after all) but they seemed pretty chill with it. Good.

“Yeah, I’m… not very happy about that. He’s a real pain in the ass now. More than normally, even. Er, figuratively speaking, that is.”

“Well, watch out so that it doesn’t go that far!” said a voice from the group and Jongdae’s breath caught in his throat. Holy- That… that couldn’t happen, right?

He could hear Chanyeol’s friends snickering at him while he coughed, and he tried to ignore them. His face was probably beetroot red by now, though.

“I think I’m done talking to you guys now”, Jongdae shortly said when he regained his ability to speak. He had heard something along the lines of “Why is Kim talking to the Gryffindors?” from a passerby, and he didn’t want to attract more attention.

He then dragged his steps back to where Chanyeol was waiting for him, expectant smile on his unattractive face.

“What did you say to them?”

“Nothing.”

Jongdae noticed that he was standing even further away from Chanyeol than what he did before. What that friend of Chanyeol’s had said kind of haunted him. He definitely did not want to have _those_ kinds of thoughts in his head at the moment, especially not if they involved _Chanyeol_ of all people. But… Chanyeol could not try anything, right? He wouldn’t. Jongdae looked up at Chanyeol, his round, at the moment very innocent-looking eyes, and silly smile, no. Jongdae was sure he wouldn’t. That love potion only created romantic attraction, not sexual.

“Are you okay? You’re really red in the face”, Chanyeol sounded quite concerned, glancing down at him.

“… I’m fine.”

The lesson soon started, so Jongdae and Chanyeol both entered the classroom. After telling Chanyeol to take a seat as far away from him as possible, Jongdae felt himself relax. Chanyeol would keep quiet during the lesson, the reward he had promised him was too important.

A couple of minutes into the lesson, which a lot of them already seemed to have tuned out, a scrunched up paper ball landed on Jongdae’s desk. Glancing at the direction it came from, he saw some of his friends gazing at him curiously. Oh. He almost hadn’t been able to hang out with any of them today, it was only during their previous lesson in Herbology when they got to work in groups.

Opening the ball of paper, Jongdae recognised Hyuna’s handwriting. So she had been the one to throw it, then.

_To: Dae_ , it said, and Jongdae rolled his eyes. How unnecessary to write a recipient when she’d just throw it at his desk anyway.

_Are u having troubles w/ Park? Can we help u?_

That was all the note said, leaving a huge empty part below where Jongdae could write an answer. He could not believe they actually offered to help him. Maybe they did care.

_park’s whole existence is trouble. today is just worse than normal. and no, i don’t know, what could you do?_ , he wrote and aimed to throw the paper back to Hyuna. When receiving it she read through the contents, snorted, and scribbled something down. Soon it landed on Jongdae’s desk again.

_Tbh I don’t really know either. Lock him into a storage room or smth if he becomes too much of a pain_ , it said. Jongdae did not know if he should be scandalised or laugh at the suggestion. It would be such a horrible thing to do, yet amusing. He couldn’t do that.

Quickly writing that as an answer, he threw the note back to Hyuna (he would much rather have levitated it in a more sophisticated manner, but their teacher had a very strict no-wands-during-class policy and he didn’t want to get in trouble). She shrugged, wrote something down and when Jongdae could read it again, it only said:

_I can’t wait until we tell Kris abt this._

Jongdae rolled his eyes, and looked at his other friends who seemed to be dying to read their conversation, so he threw it to one of them to pass along. They would be able to meet Kris during lunch, and they would probably have lots of fun telling him about Jongdae’s misery. Jongdae was unsure if he could accompany them, though, as he didn’t want to leave Chanyeol alone for too long in case he would say something stupid (he had a tendency to do that, after all).

He couldn’t have lunch with his friends. Just as Jongdae was leaving the classroom, steering his steps towards the Great Hall, he felt Chanyeol’s presence. Again. When he and the rest of the students had rounded a corner, Chanyeol grabbed him and they both came to a halt.

“Um…” Chanyeol started, then let go of Jongdae’s arm, fiddling with a loose thread on his cloak. As he didn’t continue after a couple of seconds, Jongdae followed up with a question.

“What?”

A straightforward question, that is. Chanyeol nearly jumped, seemingly having been lost in his own world for a little while.

“Well”, he attempted again, cheeks rapidly increasing in colour, “what… what about that kiss?”

Oh. That. Chanyeol looked at him expectantly, and Jongdae avoided his gaze. Maybe he didn’t really think this through.

“Uh, actually… The thing is… We have another lesson together this afternoon, right? Charms? If… If you do the same during that lesson, we could kiss after that”, Jongdae rambled, thinking that hopefully the potion would stop working somewhere around then.

Chanyeol looked at him the way a child looks at an ice cream they just dropped on the ground.

“What? Why not now?” Disappointment was an understatement when it came to Chanyeol’s display of emotions at the moment.

“I’m… I don’t feel ready… I’m sorry but this is the first time I’ve really liked someone and… yeah. It’s a bit difficult. I’m nervous. Maybe we can do it later, when I’ve gotten used to the idea…” Jongdae was essentially bullshitting his way through this but Chanyeol seemed to believe him. Surprisingly. Okay, Chanyeol was not the brightest guy around and additionally his mental state probably wasn’t the best today.

“Ah, Jongdae, you’re so cute. So innocent. But okay, you have to promise!”

The compliments (?) made Jongdae both flattered and annoyed. Cute and innocent were not really the kind of words he’d want to be associated with, but alright. He still felt a warm feeling in his stomach for being called that, though, by someone like Chanyeol. It was partly true actually, he had not ever liked someone for real (romantically, that is). Sure, he’d had a bunch of small crushes when he was younger, but nothing special. Nothing that gave him difficulties sleeping or butterflies in his stomach, or whatever people said. Although he still would not call himself _innocent_. He was a teenager, after all.

“Right?”

“H-huh? Yeah, I promise”, Jongdae uttered, this time he had been the one to have his head in the clouds.

“Great! I have another condition”, Chanyeol said and Jongdae mentally cringed. This was probably not going to be something he liked.

“Can we have lunch together?”

And, this was why Jongdae couldn’t have lunch with his friends.

He considered his different options, but it seemed like accepting Chanyeol’s offer was the best one. Making Chanyeol at least a bit satisfied seemed like a good idea (to not create trouble), and he would also keep Chanyeol away from other people that way. The only problem was telling him they couldn’t eat in the hall. “I don’t want to be seen together with you” was honest but it was also a very mean answer. Sometimes a guy had to lie a little to get by.

“Only if we… eat by ourselves.”

…Or, make it sound more appealing. Chanyeol did not even question why Jongdae wanted them to have lunch on their own. He just nodded so violently Jongdae almost expected him to get neck pains from it.

“That’s fine! It’s great! Okay with me!”

“Do you know a good spot, then?”

Again, Chanyeol nodded excitedly.

“Yup! Come, I’ll show you”, he said and grabbed Jongdae’s hand. This was the first time, he had just been grabbing Jongdae’s arm before. Jongdae liked this more, actually. It was more gentle. More comfortable.

They reached the spot Chanyeol had in mind, which was outdoors. It was on the grassy hill which the castle was situated on, near the place where it slanted forward, so when they sat down they had a view of the entire area; the cottage by the Forbidden Forest, the lake, and the trees and hills beyond that. It was a nice spot. It hadn’t rained the entire day, so the grass was not too wet, and Jongdae liked the calming feeling of the wind blowing through his hair. It was quite cold though, as winter was approaching. Jongdae could not wait for that.

“Don’t you look forward to this entire place being covered with snow?” Chanyeol said, voicing Jongdae’s thoughts out loud. Jongdae almost flinched, he didn’t expect that. But he rather liked that they shared their enjoyment of snow. He didn’t even know why he liked having a similar interest to Chanyeol.

“Yeah…”

They glanced at the distance for a while, trying to look as far as possible. Or, at least Jongdae did that, Chanyeol was occupied with watching him instead. Of course. Jongdae sighed.

“So… Are you gonna go get food or am I?”

“Oh, we won’t need that!” Chanyeol exclaimed, and Jongdae quirked his eyebrow. Did he really just suggest they didn’t need food? He could speak for himself then, but Jongdae on the other hand was hungry as hell. He was just about to question Chanyeol when the latter followed up his statement.

“I learnt this amazing spell that turns stones into food, or at least, edible things”, he continued, and Jongdae felt like commenting that stones technically speaking were edible already, but stopped himself, allowing Chanyeol to elaborate.

“Where did you hear about that spell?”

“I don’t know, some book in the library. Isn’t it amazing?!”

“Well, uh, let me see it in action first.”

Jongdae was sceptical. This was so typical of Chanyeol, to borrow the strangest books in the entire library and trying to learn the spells in them. Most of the time they did not even work like they were supposed to (the cockroach spell, for example).

Chanyeol stood up and walked closer to the gates to the castle, bending down to pick up a handful of gravel. Returning to Jongdae, he sat down and pointed his wand to the pile of small rocks in his hand, mumbling a word Jongdae didn’t recognise. When nothing happened, Chanyeol concentrated again, closing his eyes and mumbling something under his breath before saying the word out loud. Same as before, no result.

This was also very typically Chanyeol. One of his favourite subjects was Transfiguration, even though he wasn’t good at it. How he even got the chance to study it in a more advanced level was beyond Jongdae, Chanyeol probably had really bad grades in the subject. He did not even know why Chanyeol liked Transfiguration so much, when there were other subjects he was much better at.

“You know, I don’t think it works”, Jongdae stated blandly. Chanyeol didn’t even look at him, still focusing on the gravel in his hand.

“It should be”, he replied and tried again, but with no success. He then sighed and tossed the gravel down the hill.

“Let’s go get food then”, Chanyeol said and stood up, Jongdae relievedly doing the same.

This was Jongdae’s sixth year of attending this school, yet he was not sure if bringing food out of the Great Hall was allowed. Therefore he stuffed as much he could on a plate and hid it under his cloak, sneaking out of the hall as fast as he could. Chanyeol took some more time, piling food on two plates, and when he was carrying them out of the hall he was stopped by a teacher.

“I’m just bringing food to my friend who’s ill”, he simply said as an excuse and Jongdae had to admit it was a good one. He hadn’t thought of it at all.

Well outside again, they started to dig into their food. Stuffing his mouth with mashed potato, Jongdae decided that this was the best thing that had happened today; he was finally eating something, he had a nice view and Chanyeol was quiet for once. Amazing. Chanyeol had even been nice enough to bring two plates of food, one for himself and one that they both could share. He did not eat a lot of it though, and Jongdae gladly devoured the contents of the second plate all by himself.

“You sure you don’t want any more of this?” he asked while munching on a sausage, just to be sure. Then he realised how odd it was for him to ask _Chanyeol_ a polite question, or, being nice to him in general. But it was not like Chanyeol was his normal self anyway, so it probably wasn’t that strange. Jongdae was just adapting to the situation, after all.

“I’m fine. I don’t feel very hungry, and this isn’t really my favourite food either. I’d rather watch you eat it instead.”

“Er”, Jongdae said, not sure how to reply to that. Trying to change subject, he asked, “What kind of food do you like, then?”

“Oh, lots. Chicken. Pasta. My mum makes the best pasta, I always have it at home”, Chanyeol explained and Jongdae looked at him questioningly.

“Your mum makes pasta?”

“Yeah, she likes Italian food. I do too”, Chanyeol continued.

“But you’re Korean, right? Don’t you have Korean food at home too?”

“Well, sometimes, yeah. At times it’s a mix, like adding kimchi to the pasta to make it more spicy. But it’s hard to get our hands on some of the ingredients, we can’t ask our relatives to send us them because the flight is way too long for the owls. It’s only when we’re visiting them that we can bring stuff back home”, Chanyeol said and Jongdae could relate. His parents didn’t cook any Korean dishes at all lately, only during special occasions. It was like Chanyeol said, difficult to find the right spices, the right vegetables, the right meat.

“My parents used to make this really delicious kimchi stew, with tofu and all. And on my first ride with the Hogwarts Express my mum made me bring kimbap as traveling food”, Jongdae reminisced. It felt easy to talk to Chanyeol about this, mainly because it was a thing the two of them had in common. Maybe that was why he had brought it up in the first place.

“That’s so nice. My mum made the best japchae back in Korea, but she hasn’t made it since…”

“Hey… When did you move here?” Jongdae asked, he was curious. For some reason. Of course he was always happy to get to know stuff about Chanyeol, so that he could use it against him later in his pranks (he knew that Chocoballs were a weakness of Chanyeol’s, and that turned out to be useful after all), but this was another thing. He didn’t have any ulterior motives, he was just genuinely curious.

“Um… I was just about to turn ten, I think. So around a year before starting Hogwarts.”

“Oh.”

Jongdae suddenly felt really bad about teasing Chanyeol for his accent when they were in their first year, even though Chanyeol had been equally mean to him. It was a stupid thing to do of him nonetheless. Well, okay, he was _eleven_ , he didn’t know better. But it was strange of him to start regretting it now, five years later, just because Chanyeol all of a sudden was being nice to him thanks to… certain circumstances.

It hit Jongdae how he had just been sitting there, having a civil and actually _enjoyable_ conversation with his so called arch-enemy. That was not the strange thing, though. The strange thing was the fact that it _didn’t_ feel strange. Maybe he’d already gotten used to Chanyeol’s change of attitude towards him. More than half of the twenty-four hours had gone by now, after all.

How would things be when the love potion stopped working? Jongdae would do as Kyungsoo suggested, erase Chanyeol’s memory and everything would turn back to normal, right? For the first time, Jongdae wasn’t too sure of how he felt about that. About Chanyeol going back to detesting him and… playing his childish pranks on him. Was that the kind of relationship Jongdae wanted, especially after sitting here and having a normal conversation, like… well, Jongdae wouldn’t say _friends_ , but something like that. People on good terms with each other.

“Are you cold?”

Chanyeol’s sudden question brought Jongdae’s state of mind back to the current moment, and he noticed that he was shaking slightly. It wasn’t too apparent, but probably to Chanyeol who had not let his eyes leave him for even a second. Well, it was almost winter, even if there was no snow present, and it was definitely the kind of weather that required thicker layers of clothing.

“I’m cold too”, Chanyeol continued even though Jongdae had not answered him yet, since the answer was that obvious. Jongdae noticed Chanyeol was shaking a little too, and the tips of his pointy ears were red, just like his cheeks.

“Maybe we should return to the castle”, Jongdae suggested, but he wasn’t that enthusiastic about the idea. He quite liked it here, it was nice and quiet, relaxing. Going back to the corridors packed with other students, who would mostly likely stare at them, was not something he was too keen on doing.

“We still have some time before the next lessons start, though”, Chanyeol pouted, not being enthusiastic about the suggestion either. “Can’t we stay here for a little longer? I like it when we’re by ourselves.”

“Hmm”, Jongdae replied, agreeing slightly. With the first thing Chanyeol said, not necessarily the second.

“Y'know, if you’re cold…” Chanyeol started but did not finish his sentence. Instead he moved closer to Jongdae, wrapping his arm around the latter, covering them both with his cloak. It did become a bit warmer with them sharing their body heat like that, so Jongdae had no choice but to lean into the source of the warmth. A good thing about Chanyeol being taller than him was that he could lean his head on Chanyeol’s shoulder. Finally he was useful for something. In the position Jongdae was in, he couldn’t see Chanyeol’s facial expression, but he was sure the other was smiling like an idiot.

Jongdae could launch himself into another deep thought process about how odd this situation was, that he was almost snuggling the guy he usually wouldn’t want to touch even with gloves on, and how comfortable it felt. However, he told himself not to overthink it, to just relax and enjoy the strangeness of the position they were in; the sudden affectionate and gentle Chanyeol, the warmth from both of their bodies protecting them from the cold (for the moment, at least).

Hell, Jongdae could even _smell_ Chanyeol. He had the kind of scent that almost radiated warmth in itself, a bit like a campfire or a fireplace. There was also a faint scent of something sweet. It kind of suited him.

After a while Chanyeol leaned his head on top of Jongdae’s. It probably looked really ridiculous but Jongdae could not bring himself to care. They were the only ones there after all.

Then Jongdae did start to feel a bit colder, their simple solution to the problem was only temporary. He noticed that Chanyeol started to shiver again, and he too was close to doing so if it wasn’t for the long arm wrapped around him.

“What subject do you have now?” he asked Chanyeol, who seemed a bit startled by the sudden question.

“Um… Muggle Studies, what about you?”

“Ancient Runes.”

“Is it interesting?”

Because of their proximity to each other, Jongdae felt the vibrations from whenever Chanyeol spoke. It was like he could actually _feel_ the deep voice, almost making him shiver as well.

“Yeah, it’s nice. I wouldn’t study it otherwise.”

“Ah, that’s true.”

Jongdae kind of wanted to ask Chanyeol about what classes in Muggle Studies were like, but he knew Chanyeol’s fascination with Muggles was so strong he could probably speak for hours. And they didn’t have that time. Unfortunately.

“Let’s go”, he said and got up on his feet, Chanyeol mimicking him. They parted ways when they reached the castle, telling each other “See you in Charms!” and going to their respective classrooms. Jongdae found that even though he wasn’t cold anymore, his legs were still a bit shaky. Strange.

 

Yet again, Jongdae found it hard to focus on his lesson. His thoughts were frequently drifting off to other places (most of them to a certain place on the hill where he’d been sitting before). He had realised that a simple fire charm would have been a good solution to his and Chanyeol’s problem before, but for some reason he didn’t think of it back then, favouring Chanyeol’s idea instead. Strange how he just let Chanyeol do that in the first place. Jongdae felt as though he could think more clearly now than before, not understanding what could have gotten into him during lunch. Why he had suddenly become closer to his so called arch-enemy.

Jongdae usually liked his classes in Ancient Runes, he found it very fascinating to learn a completely different writing system that was in use ages ago. Really, anything that had to do with languages interested him, and studying these runes and trying to decipher ancient pieces of writing was the kind of linguistic challenge his brain craved. But not today, evidently. His teacher asked him a question twice before he reacted, and it became even more humiliating when he couldn’t answer it. All he wanted was for the lesson to end, really.

 

Jongdae was surprised when he didn’t spot Chanyeol anywhere waiting for him when he left the classroom. Odd. It was a bit relieving, though, to be able to walk somewhere without the giant tugging on his sleeve or speaking nonsense. However, he couldn’t keep himself from wondering why Chanyeol wasn’t there.

As he was one of the first to reach the Charms classroom, Jongdae sat down outside it to wait. Looking around, he felt memories of yesterday evening come back to him; he wished he hadn’t been there, that he’d just stayed in the dormitories instead. None of this would have happened if he had done that instead of putting his dignity at stake doing some stupid prank.

Like yesterday, he heard steps approaching the classroom after a while. Jongdae looked up, expecting Chanyeol to appear in front of him, but instead it was some Gryffindor girl in their year. He vaguely hoped that the girl had Muggle Studies before this class, because that’d mean Chanyeol would arrive soon. Not that he _wanted_ him to be there, no, Jongdae was just curious about his whereabouts. He could not have Chanyeol walking around, running his mouth about things he would rather stay between the two of them.

After a while, Chanyeol finally appeared. He smiled down at Jongdae and motioned for him to stand up and come with him. Jongdae didn’t really know why, but he did as Chanyeol wanted.

“Were you waiting for me?” asked Chanyeol as they hid behind a corner, the same one that Jongdae had used as a hiding spot the previous evening.

“Um”, was all Jongdae could say. Saying yes would be rather embarrassing and partly a lie, and saying no would make Chanyeol disappointed. He settled for looking down at his shoes instead, it felt safer.

Luckily, Chanyeol did not seem to care much about his answer, instead starting to tell him about what he had learnt at his lesson in Muggle Studies earlier. Apparently Muggles didn’t only invent “cool stuff” (as Chanyeol had worded it); there were also things called _guns_ , which Muggles used to kill others (and at times themselves) with. When Chanyeol had discussed this for a whole eight minutes Jongdae jokingly wished he had one of those things, just to stop Chanyeol from opening his big mouth again.

Then, as if she had heard his plea, Hyuna appeared around the corner.

“Hey, Dae, what’re you doing?”

This caused Chanyeol to stop talking in the middle of a sentence, turn around and look somewhat irritated (to Jongdae’s delight).

“Nothing really. Just talking to Park. You can go back to the others”, Jongdae replied, feeling a bit thankful towards Hyuna for interrupting Chanyeol, but at the same time he supposed it would be better if he just stayed with Chanyeol for the moment. In case he would do something dumb.

“Alright, alright”, Hyuna said, stuck out her tongue, and disappeared from his view. Chanyeol moved his gaze back to Jongdae, looking a bit lost. He had probably forgotten what he was speaking about. After a small while of awkward staring he opened his mouth again.

“Hey… why do you call me 'Park’?”

Jongdae didn’t exactly know how to answer this either. Why did Chanyeol ask such difficult questions? He could not just reply “because I don’t like you and I want to keep the distance between us”. That would probably make Chanyeol burst out in tears or do something equally dramatic, as long as he was in this state (normally he would not have cared); besides, Jongdae wasn’t sure how he felt about that anymore. If he agreed.

“Well… That’s your name?” he replied dumbly at last, and even Chanyeol seemed to think it was a rather stupid thing to say, judging by the way he eyed Jongdae.

“Yes, but… One’d think we’re close enough to refer to each other as our first names”, Chanyeol stated, hands on his hips, looking as though he were not backing down on this.

“You already refer to me as my first name, I have to remind you”, said Jongdae, he on the other hand felt like avoiding the subject. This did not seem like it was going to end up in his favour.

“Yes, isn’t that alright? I’ve been doing it since our first year, so it’s kinda strange you’re not doing the same.”

“I…”

“We _are_ close, after all. I don’t like it when you refer to me as my surname. Can’t you try calling me my given name, at least once? I know _you_ wouldn’t have any problems with pronouncing it”, Chanyeol persisted, and Jongdae didn’t feel like having an argument just before Charms, at a place where people could hear them. He could favour Chanyeol this time, but go back to normal when the potion would stop working.

“Uh, okay, then… Chanyeol.”

It was sort of a weird feeling, saying Chanyeol’s name out loud. He hadn’t ever done that before, not that he could remember at least. Of course, it might have happened from time to time that he referred to Chanyeol as his complete name, but not solely his given name. Jongdae didn’t know how he felt about that.

Chanyeol seemed to like it though, smiling so wide he flashed Jongdae almost every single tooth in his mouth.

“See? That wasn’t so bad, was it? Sometimes you’re too silly. But I kinda like you for it. It’s cute”, Chanyeol said, and Jongdae looked away. There it was again. _Cute_. He was still not sure what he thought about Chanyeol calling him that.

“I’m…”

“You know what? We’re hidden behind a wall, no one can see us from here-”

“People could still pass us by, though!!!” Jongdae almost shouted out, not wanting to know what Chanyeol was about to suggest. “Or they could just look around the corner like Hyuna did before, it’s too risky!”

Chanyeol had a slightly put down look on his face.

“B-but if it’s something quick… There’s such a small risk that someone’d walk by right at that moment, it’s almost impossible…”

Chanyeol did that thing again where he looked like an abandoned puppy, his lower lip was even trembling, a look that probably worked on most people. Disgustingly cute. Jongdae tried not to cringe, opting for looking another way instead, perhaps at the wall. Or, again, at his feet. Although he knew Chanyeol wouldn’t stop with the sad look until he got his way.

Sighing, Jongdae finally said something.

“…Right, but… what do you even want?”

Chanyeol seemed to brighten a little, and lifted his hand to softly run his fingers through Jongdae’s hair, putting his fringe in place. Jongdae persistently continued to look down, feeling his face heat up once again. Chanyeol probably noticed that, as he made some sort of sound and when Jongdae glanced up at him he looked like he had just won the Quidditch Cup. Or, hm, almost.

“Ah, Jongdae, you’re so… _cute_ …”

The third time. Was he really that cute? Of course, Chanyeol was still affected by the love potion - he’d call anyone cute if he was synthetically in love with them like this. Even their Charms professor, Jongdae thought with a bitter smile, as it was the intended outcome of his prank.

Suddenly, Jongdae felt something touching his cheek. Something softer than Chanyeol’s rather rough hands. It was very brief, but Jongdae’s mind still sort of blanked. Did Chanyeol just… _kiss_ him?

Or… well… It was barely a peck. Jongdae should definitely calm down. It was nothing too intimate. Still, he felt his heart beating as if it were in panic. As if _he_ were in panic. Chanyeol had touched him with his _lips_ , after all. It was only natural for him to freak out, right?

Chanyeol did not seem to believe what he had done either, and the face he was making was quite remarkable. It was like a mix of satisfaction and apology. His cheeks had taken a pretty shade of scarlet, and even the tips of his ears seemed affected by his state of emotions as they also glowed the in the same shade.

“I-I’m sorry I couldn’t hold myself back I hadn’t planned to do this you just looked so cute and after all you didn’t kiss me before and I’m sorry if I upset you but-” he rambled, without even thinking of taking a break between the utterances. When he finally paused to breathe, he looked at Jongdae, wide-eyed, for a couple of seconds.

Seemingly having run out of things to say, Chanyeol then turned his gaze to his wrist as if he had a watch there - which he did not - and started talking again.

“Oh, but look at the time, we’re starting class now so… I'lljustgointherebye”, he exclaimed before running off, leaving Jongdae alone behind the corner. The latter was still stunned, lifting his hand slightly to touch the place on his cheek where he had been… pecked. After about ten seconds, his brain caught up and he sprinted away to the classroom as well, seating himself as far away from Chanyeol as possible.

 

If Jongdae had found it hard to concentrate during Ancient Runes, it was nothing to how he felt now. And concentration was really the key to mastering non-verbal charms, so the progress he made in class was very little. After failing at least seventeen times to perform a simple non-verbal Levitating Charm, he finally managed to at least do something to the quill he was supposed to lift with sheer mental power. Unfortunately it was not to his success as he accidentally chucked it all the way across the classroom, making it hit their Charms professor right in the forehead. Bulls-eye.

“ _Focus_ , Kim”, said his professor patiently, “I don’t know what’s gotten into you today, but please refrain from being distracted by other… things.”

Jongdae could swear the professor looked at Chanyeol for a millisecond when speaking the last words. Actually, their Charms teacher had been throwing him and Chanyeol suspicious glances every now and then throughout the whole lesson, probably because of what he had seen yesterday. This made it even more humiliating. Charms was one of Jongdae’s best subjects and now he couldn’t do things properly during class because of _Chanyeol_ , out of all people. He so wanted to pay back Chanyeol for all the damage he had caused him this day.

…Of course, it wasn’t _actually_ Chanyeol’s fault, but that did not stop Jongdae.

Even though he was supposed to ignore his existence during this lesson, Chanyeol still threw Jongdae these glances every now and then. Their eyes met at least three times and every one of those times Chanyeol smiled softly, giving Jongdae a knowing expression, with Jongdae promptly looking away, feeling embarrassed.

Near the end of their class Chanyeol accidentally Transfigured his quill into a toad, causing a bit of a ruckus when it jumped off his bench onto the floor. It had managed to leap halfway across the classroom when Chanyeol succeeded in retrieving it again, but still having trouble Transfiguring it back to its previous feathery state. When class ended Chanyeol still hadn’t gotten his quill back, so Jongdae had to wait for their professor to help Chanyeol before leaving the classroom with him.

 

“Did you see that? Did you see the toad?” Chanyeol almost shouted when they were on their own, walking down an empty corridor.

“I think the whole class saw”, Jongdae said honestly.

“Wasn’t it cool? I don’t think I’ve managed to turn a quill into an animal before, I always failed when we were supposed to turn one into a peacock in Transfiguration!”

Jongdae did not have the heart to tell Chanyeol that he still didn’t manage to do the task they were actually supposed to do; Chanyeol was enjoying himself far too much for him to ruin his mood. In fact, Jongdae found himself smiling slightly.

“P- Chanyeol, you’re such a doofus”, he said, but not really in a mean way. It actually didn’t feel that strange to call Chanyeol his first name, after all that was how Jongdae referred him as in his head.

“But I’m your doofus, am I not?” Chanyeol replied gladly and Jongdae felt his face turn red again. Trust Chanyeol to say something cheesy like that today.

“Er, right.”

Chanyeol then stopped in his tracks, turning to face Jongdae.

“Y'know what, haven’t I been good today, Jongdae?” he said in a surprisingly smooth tone. Jongdae warily avoided his gaze.

“Um, I’m not sure what you mean-”

Chanyeol raised a hand to do that motion again, the one where he let his thumb slowly follow an invisible line on Jongdae’s cheekbone, moving downwards.

“Haven’t I been good today? Haven’t I done as you said and ignored you during those two lessons? Don’t I deserve a …reward?”

Chanyeol’s thumb had reached the edge of Jongdae’s lips, and with that Jongdae understood what he meant.

“I, um, suppose so…”

“Really?!” Chanyeol exclaimed eagerly, dropping the rather flirtatious manner he had going on before. Jongdae sighed inwardly and looked up at Chanyeol’s rosy cheeks and expectant smile. Jongdae had received more smiles from Chanyeol today than he had in his entire life, and he didn’t know how to cope with that. It was strange, but he kind of liked it. Chanyeol was generally a smily person from what he’d heard and observed, but he never directed those smiles at Jongdae. Only the more smug ones, the arrogant ones, the almost mean ones. Today felt like a welcome change.

“…Yeah.”

He had no idea how, or why, he agreed to this. It was something about Chanyeol’s lips. Chanyeol’s eager expression. The happiness in his deep voice. To be completely honest, the whole kiss thing was something Jongdae had just come up with to get Chanyeol to shut up and leave him alone in class, not something he had planned to actually carry out. But did that matter now?

Chanyeol moved his hand to under Jongdae’s chin in a swift motion, tilting it upwards a little. Jongdae almost had the urge to giggle for some stupid reason, but he doubted it would be appropriate in this situation; on the other hand Chanyeol looked like he was close to bursting out in giggles as well.

“Jongdae, you know what? I r-really like you-”

“I know. Just get on with it”, Jongdae interrupted, he did not know why he felt so impatient, maybe he was just eager to get it done and over with, he supposed. There was an almost tickling feeling in his stomach that bothered him, it was not that comfortable, and if it continued for too long Jongdae was sure he was going to start feeling sick. If he wasn’t already. His face felt hot, his palms were sweaty, his lungs didn’t feel like they were making enough effort to keep up with his suddenly quick pulse.

Chanyeol smiled widely once again and started to lean forwards, holy shit, this was actually happening. Jongdae had not really kissed before, if you didn’t count the Ravenclaw girl in his fifth year, but you didn’t because it was under the influence of a bit too much Firewhisky and he had never talked to her since. This was another thing. He was a bit nervous, but he calmed himself down by thinking that it was just a simple kiss, even _he_ could pull that off, it wasn’t like he had promised Chanyeol to make out or anything.

Suddenly Chanyeol was too close, Jongdae was almost fascinated by how he could distinguish Chanyeol’s eyelashes from each other and spot the pores in his skin, but then he pulled himself together. Kissing. All right. Realising he would kiss Chanyeol’s chin instead of his lips if they came even closer, Jongdae had to stand on his toes. To keep his balance better, his hands found their way to Chanyeol’s sort of wide shoulders.

Then Chanyeol parted his lips slightly, tilted his head a little, Jongdae had to close his eyes, it was too much to look at, too close. He was almost frozen to the ground again, standing still at his spot, even though he felt immensely hot. Chanyeol must’ve leaned even closer to him, because now Jongdae was sure he could feel something touching his lips, something else, something soft, Jongdae felt breathless, it was now it happened for real.

Except Chanyeol suddenly moved his hands from Jongdae’s chin and pushed them to Jongdae’s chest with all the force he could gather. Jongdae felt a sharp pain in his behind as he landed on the stony ground.

“W-what is going on?! What are you doing?!?” Chanyeol shouted out, and Jongdae in his somewhat disoriented state of mind thought it was a rather stupid question, wasn’t Chanyeol aware of what he had been wanting to do all day?

Then, it came to him. Jongdae slowly lifted his gaze to Chanyeol who was towering above him, looking quite distressed; his eyes were wide, staring at Jongdae in disbelief, and his face sported an expression of something that looked like… disgust.

The potion had stopped working.

Was it really that late? No way twenty-four hours had passed already, Jongdae felt as though he had been scammed by the joke shop. What time was it, anyway? It must be past five in the afternoon, at least, so maybe… 24 hours had gone by, after all.

“Hey, listen to me! What are you doing?!” Chanyeol yet again asked, his fiery deep voice making him sound almost intimidating. Jongdae stayed on the floor, he was sure Chanyeol wouldn’t attack him if he was sitting down, frozen at his spot.

He didn’t get a chance to answer since Chanyeol lowered his voice a bit and mumbled, more to himself,

“What am _I_ doing?”

He seemed to have caught up with the fact that he was the one who initiated the kiss. Huh.

“I… wanted to…? Why did I…? Hey, you!”

Jongdae flinched when Chanyeol addressed him again, sounding less shocked and more angry than before. Frustrated, even.

“What did you do to me?!”

“I, um…” Jongdae started, yet he couldn’t finish. He could not explain this. Chanyeol wouldn’t even accept his explanation anyway, as long as he was in this state.

If only the potion had last a _little bit_ longer, just a little bit, enough to give Chanyeol his reward, at least. Jongdae found himself already missing the previous Chanyeol, the more gentle, calm, nice one. The one who he enjoyed the company of. The one who wouldn’t want to kill him in this second, like the current one probably did. Suddenly, Jongdae felt like crying. Why did this even have to happen? Why couldn’t they have a normal and civil relationship in the first place? Or, perhaps, even more than so?

He had _missed_ his chance to kiss Chanyeol.

Why he even wanted to do that in the first place was a mystery, but still. Jongdae absolutely dreaded the fact that the beautiful moment they had was left unfinished.

Chanyeol seemed determined to get some kind of answer out of Jongdae, with force if he needed, because he started to step closer to the latter, who was not far from panicking by now. But, somehow, the pressed situation made Jongdae think more clearly. As Chanyeol aggressively approached him, Jongdae lifted his wand and shouted out,

“ _Obliviate!_ ”

Chanyeol stumbled backwards from being hit by the memory charm, and Jongdae allowed himself to breathe, to collect his emotions. It was not like Chanyeol would physically attack him anyway, he was just shocked, and Jongdae could understand. He would probably be too, if he was in that situation.

When Chanyeol returned to his senses he looked around a bit, confused, then he spotted Jongdae, still sitting on the floor.

“Um, what’s… What are you doing here?”

Jongdae simply shook his head, aware that it wasn’t a proper answer, but he felt like opening his mouth would end up terribly. He wasn’t in a state to trust his emotions at the moment.

“Okay, well, I don’t really know either… I think I had class a while ago, but I’m not sure… Hey, wait. Is this one of your pranks? Is that why I’m feeling so lost?”

Chanyeol leaned forwards and eyed him suspiciously, and Jongdae once again shook his head for a reply.

“Er… Are you… Are you feeling quite alright? Is something up?” Chanyeol then uttered awkwardly, probably having noticed Jongdae’s lack of spirit. And the fact that he wouldn’t move from where he was sitting on the floor.

Somehow, he almost sounded like he cared. _Almost_. Because, it was not like he actually did. A comment made simply because of common courtesy didn’t fool Jongdae. It felt like a bad joke; Chanyeol’s fake concern reminded Jongdae of his caring nature earlier today, what Jongdae had lost by now. A sweet and affectionate Chanyeol, a bit annoying perhaps, but still meaning well, was now the normal one, someone who despised him.

Jongdae was extremely irritated, not at Chanyeol, but more at himself. Irritated that he somehow preferred how Chanyeol had treated him before, when he should be thankful Chanyeol returned to normal. That’s what he wanted from the beginning, what he had been waiting for the whole day, right? Now he didn’t know how he felt, and that frustrated him.

…So it was not exactly Chanyeol’s fault when Jongdae finally grabbed his wand again and directed it right at Chanyeol’s surprised face.

“Leave me alone! Go back to your common room!!”

Jongdae managed to stand up while still threatening Chanyeol with the wand. Chanyeol almost tripped taking a few steps backwards.

“What, w-why-”

“Go. Back.” Jongdae said through his teeth, “Now.”

“Uh, I’m- Alright, alright, I’ll go! I don’t even know why I’m here, anyway. I’ll go to some place where people are less mental”, Chanyeol sputtered, and turned around to leave.

Jongdae considered shouting after him, telling him to come back, apologising for being rude. After all, it wasn’t Chanyeol’s fault that Jongdae had felt the thought of kissing his arch-enemy as quite pleasant for a minute or two. A very confusing minute or two. However, Jongdae knew that he had ruined his chance, and Chanyeol turned around a corner and was out of sight.

 

He should be feeling relieved, Jongdae thought while heading to his own common room. Relieved that the memory charm worked, that Chanyeol wouldn’t remember a thing from this rather embarrassing day. That life would go on like it normally did, even with Jongdae’s little slip up having happened. Everything went well, after all.

Yet, he felt something in his chest that wouldn’t go away. That he was missing something. And that tiny feeling he’d had for a short while when Chanyeol had leaned in to kiss him was still there somewhere, too. Jongdae thought he was weak, being affected like that. Absolutely powerless.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hope you liked it this far!! i just felt like sharing a couple of details here: the story is obviously set quite a bit after the events of the harry potter books, and since i have no idea which teachers work on hogwarts after that i decided to not mention any of the teachers' names.  
> also, chanyeol as a gryffindor was an obvious choice for me, but on the other hand choosing a house for jongdae was a bit trickier. i decided to put him in slytherin because it fit him in this particular story, but otherwise i can also see him as a gryffindor (or possibly a hufflepuff).  
> ok, that's enough for me! thanks for reading, the next part will hopefully be uploaded soon as well!


	2. Part 2: Crush Confirmed

Chanyeol was sure Jongdae was avoiding him. Or at least, something was up with him. He didn’t act like he normally did.

He was not very sneaky about it, really. Whenever Jongdae spotted Chanyeol walking in the same corridor as him, he would immediately turn around and steer his steps another way. He would arrive to the lessons they shared just as they were about to start, instead of being there in advance like he usually was, probably to avoid seeing Chanyeol more than he had to. He never even seemed to _look_ at Chanyeol anymore, just ignoring him as though he didn’t exist.

Normally, Jongdae interacted with him a lot. Of course, there were the pranks they would play on each other, but Jongdae would also make fun of him or simply just send resentful expressions his way. The pranks were all in good fun, Chanyeol quite liked messing around with Jongdae, but the somewhat mean comments and glares were something he could do without. At least, that was what he thought.

This complete silence was actually worse. To be treated like air. Chanyeol could think of lots of things he would give to hear Jongdae lower his voice an octave, pull his ears, and say something along the lines of “My name is Chanyeol Park and I think I’m hot shit just because I’m tall and have the face of a house-elf”.

Chanyeol guessed he could confront Jongdae about it, but there was no need. He was pretty sure he knew why Jongdae was avoiding him. And he supposed he could understand.

His friends had told him about the Love Potion Incident that had happened a couple of days ago. Chanyeol himself had no memories of it at all, supposedly because Jongdae had made sure to use a memory charm on him. All he could recall was Jongdae sitting on the floor, looking completely destroyed, not being able to say a word. Chanyeol had been a little confused to why he was there with him in the first place, and he was honestly shocked when Jongdae finally managed to speak up and yelled at Chanyeol to leave him alone. Chanyeol did as he was told, actually, and returned to his common room where his friends had told him what they knew. But they did not know what really had happened during the day.

Since Chanyeol had been, well, head-over-heels for Jongdae he had been following him around, but he didn’t know what Jongdae did about it. If he tried to avoid him, or if he perhaps managed to put up with him. It still did not explain why Jongdae had seemed so distressed that evening. Chanyeol did not do anything, right…? It was not like he could control what he was doing at the time, so he didn’t know. The only one who knew was Jongdae, but there was no way Chanyeol was going to ask him.

It must’ve been quite hard to have Chanyeol being in love with him, after all he knew Jongdae wasn’t very fond of him. But Chanyeol did not feel a lot of sympathy for Jongdae, though. He had brought it onto himself. Had he really planned to make Chanyeol fall for their Charms teacher? That’s an excessively mean prank. Humiliating. Chanyeol wouldn’t even _think_ of doing such a thing to Jongdae.

He felt angry about the prank - which was bad since it took a lot to make Chanyeol angry - even though Jongdae had failed. The failure did not make things any better, either. Worse, probably. Chanyeol wasn’t sure if he wanted to find out what had happened during those twenty-four hours.

To look at things in a positive way, nobody seemed to know about the incident. The only ones who did were him, his friends, Jongdae, and possibly some of Jongdae’s friends as well. No one else in their year knew anything, and Chanyeol hadn’t heard a sound from the rest of the students, either. It was a bit strange, as something like that would usually spread like wildfire across the school in no time at all. Somehow, Jongdae had managed to cover it up. Chanyeol supposed he should at least feel a bit thankful for that.

  
  


It was the second to last week of the term, and Christmas was closing in on them. There were Christmas decorations around every corner, and the Great Hall had seemingly been invaded by Christmas trees. It had snowed once a couple of days ago, but unfortunately the snow soon melted away. However, the temperature outside today was well below zero and it looked like a snowstorm was on its way towards them.

Therefore Chanyeol, a fan of snowy weather, was in a rather happy mood, almost skipping along the corridor to his first lesson that day: Transfiguration. As he had woken up early the corridor was completely empty of people, the only thing to be heard were his footsteps against the stone floor.

However, he soon heard voices breaking the silence. They seemed to be whispering, and Chanyeol, being a bit too curious, took a turn to the right to follow the direction of said voices.

Around the corner, he spotted Jongdae and his friend and housemate Hyuna Kim. They were walking slowly with their backs turned to Chanyeol’s direction (thankfully) and they looked rather suspicious. Of course, it was not uncommon for them to look like they were up to something, but right now they were almost more suspicious-looking than ever.

Even though Chanyeol felt a small flame of anger inside of him at the sight of Jongdae, his curiosity was too strong and he subtly tried to follow their steps, staying at an arbitrary distance behind the two. What if they were planning another prank, an even worse one than what Jongdae had attempted to do before? Chanyeol had to keep an eye on them if they acted like this, for his and everyone else’s wellbeing.

They rounded a corner and Chanyeol lost sight of them, however he could still hear their voices. Creeping closer to the wall, Chanyeol realised that they had stopped. Perfect.

“Really, Dae. You have to tell me. Why are you acting like this?” Hyuna’s voice said. There was then a pause for a couple of seconds.

“Why do you care?” uttered Jongdae finally. It was a rather rude thing to say, but his tone didn’t sound too rude, Chanyeol noted.

“Why shouldn’t I? I’m not completely heartless, if you thought that. Also, you’re no fun when you’re being like this all the time. Down. And such.”

“I’m alright, really-”

Chanyeol considered leaving, this did not seem like it had any relevance to him at all. However, he was a bit excited to know that Hyuna thought that Jongdae was acting strangely, too. And he kind of wanted to know-

“Does this have to do with what happened with Park?”

Okay, yes, he was staying a bit longer.

“What even happened?” Hyuna added.

“Nothing, really.”

“Are you speaking the truth?”

“Yeah. I mean, you saw us, he followed me around and stuff, being bothersome… He wasn’t too touchy though so it was endurable. And I managed to get him to leave me alone during our lessons together. So it was alright… Although I didn’t enjoy it. Try having someone you hate deeply in love with you for a day, it’s not fun.”

“Aw, so nothing happened? No funny details or anything? Nothing I can tease you about?” Hyuna sounded almost disappointed.

“Uh, no”, Jongdae answered shortly and Chanyeol was hit by relief. The things Jongdae said seemed completely honest. Nothing had happened. Nothing bad. Nothing that permanently traumatised Jongdae and left him trying his best to ignore Chanyeol’s existence- wait. Why did he do that, then?

Hyuna thought something similar to Chanyeol.

“But how come you were so… _low_ when you came back to the common room that day? You still kinda are, y'know.”

“Ah, well, I’m… I don’t know, it was the whole experience overall. It was too much. I told you to imagine your biggest enemy fancying you for a day, that’s really uncomfortable. And…”

“And?” Hyuna pressed on.

“I’m… Er… Yeah, something happened at the end. I mean, it wasn’t anything big, but that’s kinda the reason to why I wasn’t feeling well afterwards. Partly.”

There was then a complete silence. Chanyeol waited, his heart beating impatiently. So something _had_ happened, after all.

“So…?” Hyuna asked after a couple of seconds, clearly as impatient as Chanyeol.

“Um…”

“Did he show you his dick?”

Chanyeol choked on his breath.

“I’m- _what!? No!!_ ” Jongdae almost shouted while Hyuna laughed loudly, thankfully covering up the sound of Chanyeol coughing to clear his throat.

“Why would you- I don’t- _Why-_ ” sputtered Jongdae, and Hyuna answered him when her laughter had died down.

“I know, I know, I was only joking, geez. Just trying to lighten the mood a bit.”

“I don’t see what’s so funny about that”, Jongdae said and Chanyeol could agree. She had almost given him a heart attack.

“But, tell me what happened then! It wasn’t worse than that, right?”

“No, of course not! He just… t-tried to kiss me. I mean, he _tried_ , I managed to push him off, and then the potion stopped working. I managed to use a memory charm on him. But still, it was, uh, a bit traumatising.”

Chanyeol got the feeling there was something Jongdae chose not to tell, but he couldn’t come up with what. He decided it was probably some useless suspicion, and told himself to take Jongdae’s word on this. It seemed like nothing _had_ happened between them after all, and he needed to stay optimistic. This was just some one-time mistake they could leave behind by now. And never talk about again, hopefully.

“I still don’t want to see that jerk again. I hate him. I really can’t stand the sight of him, he’s like… a bad nightmare.”

Chanyeol decided to leave, and unquietly steered his footsteps back to the corridor which he came from; he didn’t care if they heard him. What Jongdae had said last made the anger boil inside of him again. Chanyeol did not like being angry, and as he was a generally optimistic person it took a lot to set him off. This seemed to have touched a nerve, or something.

He did not know why Jongdae hated him so much. What had he ever done to him? Of course, there was the accident in their first year that started the whole rival-like relationship they had, but it wasn’t something huge. Really, it was a pretty small thing. Not something that would make Jongdae hate him five years later.

And sure, they played pranks on each other and at times they could be a bit mean. But it was all in good fun. Chanyeol definitely did not detest Jongdae for it. He obviously wasn’t that fond of Jongdae either, but he _didn’t hate him_. What in the world could he have done to make Jongdae “not being able to stand the sight of him”?!

Besides, it was Jongdae’s own fault that the whole Love Potion Incident happened in the first place, he couldn’t blame his screwup on Chanyeol. That was incredibly unfair.

Chanyeol wanted revenge. To do something just as bad. Jongdae’s prank had backfired, but it was still a terrifyingly mean prank. Chanyeol did not know what to do yet, but it would be something mean, too.

  
  


His opportunity to do something _just as bad_ came as soon as the next week. Their final week. Perfect, he would have a chance to do it before the holidays.

It was their very last Potions lesson that term, so their professor had prepared something special.

“This is something some of you have been asking me to let you do for a long time”, he sent a glance to a couple of excited-looking girls in the corner, “so think of it as a Christmas treat.”

Their teacher then proceeded to take off the lid of a cauldron that was waiting on his desk. Chanyeol was standing too far back to see the contents, but he could spot the steam forming spirals, and suddenly he was met with a very pleasant scent. Glancing at Jongdae, he could see that the latter looked quite alarmed. Chanyeol couldn’t understand why, why worry about a thing when there was such a nice smell filling up the room…

“Does anyone know what this is?”

The girls in the corner burst out in giggles, and the professor pointed to one of them.

“Er, yes, it’s an Amortentia”, said the girl and her friends giggled again.

“Very well”, said their professor, “the strongest love potion there is. It is identifiable by its spiral-like steam, and its ability to change its scent depending on what each person finds the most appealing.”

Ah, so that was why Chanyeol enjoyed the smell so much. It reminded him of the pasta his mother made, and he could also distinguish the smell of Chocoballs, and… something else, something he couldn’t identify. He was sure he had smelled it before, but he couldn’t remember from where…

Once again he threw a glance at Jongdae, who looked like he was about to be sick. His face was unusually pale and had the expression of someone who would rather be anywhere else than here. Chanyeol could not hold back a somewhat malicious smile, the words “that’s what you get” repeating in his head.

“The instructions are on your desks, and you have the entire lesson to make it. Remember that it’s a very advanced potion to create, so read the instructions carefully and do exactly as they say. And don’t be nervous, I don’t expect you to succeed on your first attempt, but do try your best!” The teacher clasped his hands, but then seemed to remember something.

“Oh, and a very important thing! It’s not mentioned in the instructions, but make sure to put in the fairybug eggs in the order of size, from smallest to largest! And remember to stir slowly and carefully. The potion is supposed to have a pearl-like colour, if it turns grey you have to put the lid on immediately!”

Everyone instantly went to their desks and started to work. Well, everyone except one. Jongdae was still standing where he had been before, looking at nothing in particular, seemingly lost in thoughts. Chanyeol noted that he was still very pale-faced.

“What are you doing, Kim? Why don’t you start making your potion?” the teacher asked, and Jongdae twitched at being spoken to.

“Oh? Ah, yes, sorry, I’ll begin!” he said and rushed to his desk.

The classroom was soon filled with various scents. Looking around, Chanyeol could spot that the contents of the cauldron varied from person to person. A lot of them were white, one was lime green, a couple were purple-ish, another was brown… Chanyeol forced himself to look at his own again, concentrating. His was the white, pale pink-ish colour it was supposed to be at this stage, to his relief.

He was determined to do well this lesson, to actually manage to produce a perfect Amortentia. If he did, he could use it as a way to get revenge on Jongdae. To let him have a taste of his own medicine. That’d teach him.

When more than half of the time had gone by, Chanyeol allowed himself to look around the classroom again. At this time, the potion was supposed to have turned a pale blue colour, which Chanyeol’s had done. He seemed to be the only one who had succeeded with this so far, he noticed happily. There were now several green ones, a couple of browns and a potion in an unfortunate bright shade of yellow. Jongdae looked like he was stuck at the white stage, a frustrated expression on his face while he stirred intensely. _You were supposed to stir slowly and carefully_ , Chanyeol reminded him in his head, but he wasn’t saying it out loud. The sight of Jongdae failing to make his potion kind of amused him.

The fact that he seemed to be the only one who did well so far boosted Chanyeol’s confidence, he was sure he would succeed at this rate. Actually, he had believed so since the start. He was pretty good at Potions, probably the best in his year. Most of times, he didn’t even have to make a big effort to produce great potions, it was mostly the theoretical stuff that could be a bother. Reading and memorising ingredients to various antidotes, and such. That was what he was bad at. He did not enjoy reading about potion making.

The truth was that he didn’t really like the subject at all. Or, well, he did not _hate_ it, but he just didn’t find it interesting. There were other subjects he liked more, like Transfiguration and Muggle Studies, for example. Yet, Potions was no doubt the subject he was the best at. Maybe it wasn’t that strange, his mother was not only an excellent chef but also a very skilled potion maker. Chanyeol supposed he inherited her skills, as it came naturally to him. And he knew that was one of the reasons to why Jongdae disliked him. Jongdae was interested in Potions, yet he was far from as good as Chanyeol. Funny, because Chanyeol sometimes wished he had Jongdae’s skills in Transfiguration and Charms.

When the lesson was about to end, Chanyeol spotted several frustrated faces around him. He was perfectly happy, though, his potion had turned into that pearl-like hue it was supposed to.

“Park! You’re exceeding the expectations I had on all of you, as always! I am deeply impressed. Now, let’s try and see if the potion works as it’s supposed to…” rambled their teacher. Chanyeol was sure it would work, the steam was forming spirals and the potion had the appealing scent he had smelled at the beginning of class.

The professor opened a locker filled with glass jars and brought one of them to Chanyeol’s desk. It contained one single beetle, and Chanyeol watched curiously as the teacher carefully opened the lid to release a drop of Chanyeol’s Amortentia inside of the jar, and then closed it again. After the beetle seemed to have devoured some of the liquid, the professor completely took off the lid to set the beetle free, and it immediately steered its wings towards Chanyeol.

He watched in amazement as the beetle flew in circles around his face, being a lot braver than the ordinary insect, until their teacher caught it in the jar again. The beetle desperately pressed itself against the glass, trying to escape its prison and come flying towards Chanyeol again, but with no success. Most of the class watched as their teacher put the glass jar back into the locker again.

“Wonderful! A perfectly produced Amortentia, if I’ve ever seen one. Twenty points to Gryffindor!”

Chanyeol felt his chest swell with pride; he had succeeded. When the professor walked off to inspect the other, less successful potions he reached under his desk to pull out a tiny bottle, like the ones his mum used when she was taking samples of different potions. Checking that no one was looking his way, Chanyeol quickly filled the bottle with Amortentia, so that he had some to use on Jongdae for his revenge. He still didn’t know _how_ he would get Jongdae to drink it, though, but he’d come up with something.

At the thought of him, Chanyeol threw a glance at Jongdae, who seemed to be panicking. He stirred hastily, then stopped to look down at his potion. Chanyeol did the same, and noticed that Jongdae’s potion had turned into a grey colour. Wait. Wasn’t there something you were supposed to do if it turned grey…?

Chanyeol looked over to the professor, who was talking to a Ravenclaw girl with a marine blue solution in her cauldron. He seemed to be very occupied with the conversation, but maybe Chanyeol could still ask him-

Chanyeol’s thought process was left unfinished when he heard a loud _thud_. He immediately turned to the direction of the sound, just like the rest of the inhabitants of the room. His stomach dropped when he saw what had caused the noise.

Jongdae was lying on the floor, seemingly unconscious. His head looked like it had hit the ground very hard, as a pool of red blood slowly grew larger under it. Before Chanyeol knew it he was rushing towards him, making his way through the rows of tables.

The teacher instantly seemed to know what had happened; he raised his wand to cover Jongdae’s cauldron with the lid, and sprinted up to the unconscious student as well.

“He must’ve forgotten to put in the fairybug eggs in order of size, foolish boy, I told him it was important…” the professor mumbled while kneeling down beside Jongdae’s body, carefully lifting his head.

“Is he going to be alright?” asked a voice from behind them, and the teacher nodded to Chanyeol’s relief.

“Yes, it’s nothing dangerous, the steam from his mistake of a potion just rendered him unconscious, but his head hit the floor a little too hard… I’ll use a blood-stopping charm on him for now, but I think it’ll be best to bring him to the hospital wing to get him fully healed.”

The teacher directed his wand to Jongdae’s head, and within a second the wound seemed to have stopped bleeding.

“Does anybody want to bring him to the hospital wing? Or do I have to pick someone?”

Before he could think over what he was doing, Chanyeol raised his hand.

“I’ll do it!”

“That’s incredibly nice of you, Park. Make sure to tell Madam Pomfrey what has happened, and let her inspect the wound on his head. He’ll wake up by himself in a short time, the steam is not deadly or anything, it just knocks you out for a while.”

Chanyeol nodded, understanding what to do, but then… He was not completely sure how to get Jongdae there when he wasn’t in a state to walk. Or do any movements at all, really. Kneeling down beside him, Chanyeol realised there was probably only one thing he could do. He internally thanked the fact that none of Jongdae’s friends seemed to have chosen to take this class, and carefully moved his arms to under Jongdae’s back and knees, securing his grip around the other before pulling him tightly against his own body. Then, he straightened his legs, standing up. Taking a couple of wobbly steps, Chanyeol left the classroom with Jongdae in his arms.

It was a rather long walk, the Potions classroom was in the dungeons, and the hospital wing in the tower on the opposite side of the castle. However, Chanyeol found it easier to carry Jongdae after walking a bit, getting used to it. Jongdae was both tiny and thin, he therefore wasn’t too heavy, and Chanyeol at least hoped that his Quidditch training had improved his strength.

It was unusual of him to help Jongdae like this, but Jongdae was really in a vulnerable situation. Completely defenceless. It was just Chanyeol acting like any normal human being would, helping an injured and unconscious person.

Looking down at his face, Chanyeol noted that Jongdae was still pale in a sickly sort of way. It must have been a very stressful experience for him, the Potions lesson. At least he looked more peaceful now. His eyes were closed, the long eyelashes keeping them shut, dark against his current complexion. There was no crease between his eyebrows, all signs of worry absent from his face.

Chanyeol forced himself to look away, keeping his eyes on the corridor in front of him instead.

When he reached the hospital wing Chanyeol did as he was told and started telling Madam Pomfrey about what had happened. She inspected the wound on the back of Jongdae’s head, then healed it by applying some sort of ointment. Chanyeol was then told that Jongdae would regain consciousness by himself in a matter of minutes, since the amount of steam he had inhaled from the potion had been very small.

Chanyeol decided to wait for Jongdae to recover, mainly since Madam Pomfrey was busy taking care of a student in a much more severe condition (a third-year who had accidentally frozen her arms together during Charms) and couldn’t tend to him. She had put a glass of water next to the bed Jongdae had been placed on, though, and told Chanyeol it was important for Jongdae to drink after waking up.

Chanyeol was left sitting in a chair next to the bed, simply observing Jongdae in his state of unconsciousness. It was strange, but a whole lot easier to look at Jongdae when he wasn’t looking so… contemptuous. The fact that the only time Jongdae was alright to deal with was when he wasn’t even awake made Chanyeol feel rather bad. But it was not his fault that Jongdae seemed to hate him. Again, he had not really done anything to deserve it. Not that much, anyway.

He kind of wished they hadn’t started off in such a bad way. That they could have a more civil relationship. Jongdae did actually seem both smart and funny at times, and pretty nice to everyone who wasn’t Chanyeol, so it was almost frustrating that they had such a bad relation to each other.

Looking at Jongdae, Chanyeol suddenly felt that anger from before reappear inside of him. The prank Jongdae had done, or had at least planned to do, was hard to forgive. Really. If Chanyeol could just find a good moment for revenge…

Wait. Chanyeol glanced to his side, at the bedside table. The glass of water. _An idea_.

He still had the small bottle of Amortentia in his pocket, and taking it out without anyone seeing him was not a difficult task at his current place. Emptying the contents in the glass of water, Chanyeol felt a grin spread across his face. Revenge. Revenge! This was such a perfect moment for it. Maybe _that_ was the reason to why he had taken Jongdae to the hospital wing, and sat here waiting for him… Not at all because he felt like helping him, and _definitely not_ because he was worried for him!

In a minute or so, Jongdae shifted slightly on the bed, then opened his eyes slowly. Looking around, said eyes widened when he spotted Chanyeol.

“Um… Ah, Cha- Park!” Jongdae made a sound and scrambled to a sitting position on the bed. Chanyeol raised an eyebrow. It had sounded suspiciously like Jongdae had been about to say his given name… That was a bit strange, since Jongdae insisted to call him by his family name, just because he disliked him so much. It was a well known fact. How come he almost said it now?

“What’s, er, going on…? What happened?!”

Chanyeol brushed his thoughts aside, he had probably misheard Jongdae, anyway. Instead he put his focus on answering the question.

“You’re in the hospital wing-”

“Thank you, I’ve noticed”, Jongdae interrupted, his usual hostility back.

“Let me continue”, Chanyeol sighed, “you’re in the hospital wing _because_ your potion turned grey and you breathed in some of the steam and fainted.”

“That’s- that’s… Really? Why would I faint from something like that?!” Jongdae seemed a bit worked up at the fact that he had lost consciousness in front of everyone. Embarrassed, even. It was a little satisfying.

“I don’t know, I think the steam from the grey potion is poisonous, or something. Our professor told us that we had to cover the cauldron with its lid if it turned grey, don’t you remember?

“H-he didn’t say that!”

“He did. Maybe you weren’t listening”, Chanyeol said in a superior manner, feeling a bit content with Jongdae’s troubled face. “You probably didn’t add the fairybug eggs in order of size, either. And you stirred quickly and sloppily instead of being careful.”

“…Why are you here, anyway?” asked Jongdae then, rather rudely, most likely because he wanted to talk about something else than his failure during Potions.

“I was the one who brought you here. You should be more thankful.” Chanyeol didn’t know why he did it, but he smiled at Jongdae who looked a bit taken aback.

“You… you… what? Why?” he said, stumbling over his words.

“You needed assistance and nobody else wanted. I was just doing what a normal human being would do if they saw someone faint and injure themselves like you did. Wouldn’t you do the same?”

“I’m… uh. Wait. Do you have any hidden motives?!” Jongdae uttered defensively. Chanyeol shook his head.

“None at all?”

Chanyeol shook his head a second time and Jongdae eyed him.

“How am I supposed to believe you?”

“I _don’t_ have any motives. Why do you think people always have a secret plan behind every nice action? Is this a Slytherin thing, that you believe people shouldn’t do anything unless they gain something from it themselves?”

Jongdae looked a bit irritated.

“I just don’t see the use in doing something nice to someone you hate. Unless this is part of a prank, or something”, he muttered harshly, looking down.

“I don’t hate you, though”, Chanyeol said truthfully. He could see Jongdae’s eyes widen, but he still did not look up from his lap. Did Jongdae seriously believe that Chanyeol _hated_ him?

There was an awkward silence, none of them dared say anything for a while, but when he was glancing to the side Chanyeol spotted the glass of water again. Oh, right.

“Hey, drink some water. Madam Pomfrey put it there for you”, he said and pointed to the water. Jongdae shrugged and reached for the glass, still avoiding looking Chanyeol in the eyes.

This was it. The moment Chanyeol would get his revenge. The moment when Jongdae would get to know how it felt to be utterly humiliated. Chanyeol observed Jongdae as the latter lifted the glass to his lips, taking a sip. He intently watched Jongdae’s hand around the glass, the way his adam’s apple moved as he gulped down the water. When Jongdae was done, putting back the empty glass on the bedside table, Chanyeol was still looking at him, checking for any sign that the potion had started to work.

Nothing really seemed to happen. Chanyeol did not know if the change would be visible though, it was a change of feelings after all. But he still thought Jongdae would be paying him more attention than this. At the moment he was just looking down at his hands.

After a while, Jongdae lifted his gaze. Chanyeol prepared himself for, he did not know, _something_.

“What the hell are you staring at?”

…Not the kind of reaction Chanyeol had expected. Feeling embarrassed, he immediately tore his gaze from Jongdae’s face. Did the potion need a bit of time to start working… or? No, it had worked instantly on the beetle; it was supposed to do that. Even on someone like Jongdae, who was significantly larger than the bug.

“How… are you feeling?” Chanyeol asked, just to get something more out of Jongdae. Something to prove that the love potion had worked, after all.

“Why do _you_ care?” Jongdae replied rudely, nope, not a trace of affection lining his voice. How did this not work? Chanyeol looked at the empty glass, Jongdae had downed all of it, he should be affected. Unless… maybe, Amortentia was not to be mixed with water. That could be it. He had to look it up, somehow.

“Don’t you have class soon, anyway? Why don’t you go there instead of sitting around here?” Jongdae then said and Chanyeol flinched. Of course he had class. How could he forget that?

“Aren’t you going as well?” he asked Jongdae who shook his head.

“I need to rest some more, I think”, he said even though he looked perfectly fine to Chanyeol.

“Right”, Chanyeol shrugged indifferently, even though his brain was filled with questions, mainly: _Why didn’t the love potion work?!_

Maybe he should just wait it out a bit. See if anything would change after a while. He could not stay in the hospital wing forever, though, he had Muggle Studies and the lesson had started ten minutes ago. Perhaps he should get going.

Waving goodbye to Jongdae, who did not seem to acknowledge him, Chanyeol sprinted towards his next lesson.

  
  


By lunchtime, Jongdae had returned from the hospital wing, healthy and (most importantly) not unconscious. Chanyeol spotted him sitting on his usual seat at the usual Slytherin table with his usual pals. Even though Jongdae was not the most popular person in school, far from it, some of his friends surprisingly were.

Hyuna was sitting on Jongdae’s left side, and she was considered one of the most attractive girls in school. Hell, even Amber seemed to have a small crush on her, even though she mostly preferred guys. It was of course a bit sad that pretty much the only way girls were made popular was if they were good-looking; Hyuna seemed like an alright person, smart and confident and all, her good looks not being her only strong point.

On Jongdae’s other side sat Kris Wu. He was in year seven, but was actually two years older than Chanyeol, Jongdae, and the others. He had apparently started school a year too late for reasons that were unknown to Chanyeol.

Chanyeol didn’t particularly like Kris, but that was only based on the fact that he was the captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team, Gryffindor’s biggest rivals. Kris was also fairly popular, so Chanyeol supposed he was probably a nice person once you’d get to know him. He had a rather cool demeanour and did not seem like the brightest kid in the sandbox but he was a hell of a good Quidditch player. He played Keeper, and had (unfortunately) kept Chanyeol from scoring numerous times.

Jongdae looked kind of small in between the two. Of course, Kris was a lot taller, he was even taller than Chanyeol. Hyuna, on the other hand, was about the same height as Jongdae. A tiny bit shorter, even. Somehow, she still made Jongdae look a little small. Perhaps it was the different confidence levels. Hyuna held herself up with great confidence while Jongdae, who was usually pretty sure of himself, seemed to have lost all of his lately. Maybe it was because of the thing… that happened. _That_. Chanyeol did not feel guilty or anything, though, since it had been Jongdae’s own fault.

While he was looking, Jongdae lifted his gaze and for less than a second glanced right into Chanyeol’s eyes. Chanyeol tried as fast as he could to tear his gaze away, as did Jongdae, both of them looking somewhere completely else, acting as if it had never happened.

During the rest of the lunch Jongdae avoided looking in Chanyeol’s direction, instead seemingly being in deep conversation with his friends. Once in a while he smiled widely at something that had been said, and it almost felt strange, seeing him form a genuinely happy expression like that. It was actually really pretty. His mouth, with the way its corners cutely turned upwards, opened wide to expose neat rows of teeth and Chanyeol could swear his eyes _shone_. Jongdae was like a completely different person from how he was with Chanyeol. Why couldn’t he smile like that at him? Would Chanyeol ever get to see that smile coming his way at all?

Chanyeol observed them as they left, noticing Hyuna not-so-subtly slapping Jongdae’s butt in a casual manner when they walked out of the door. They were gone from Chanyeol’s sight before he could witness Jongdae’s reaction, but he did not seem very shaken as it happened. Was this something they normally did? A friendly gesture? Chanyeol and his friends sure did not do that. It was something he had seen girls do to each other jokingly, but Hyuna and Jongdae were a girl and a boy. What was their relationship, even?

Chanyeol felt a weird tugging feeling in his stomach, but decided to ignore it.

  
  


After a lesson in Transfiguration without any signs of affection from Jongdae at all, Chanyeol realised something.

He was actually pretty relieved that his prank with the Amortentia didn’t work. A bit irritated, sure, he really wondered what he did wrong, but still relieved. It was, to be quite honest, a really stupid prank. Chanyeol had been too focused on the thought of revenge to think of the consequences. If the prank had worked he would have Jongdae all over him for the whole day…! Even though the thought of Jongdae admiring his existence was rather appealing, Chanyeol was sure it would be very bothersome as well. And it would not only be embarrassing for Jongdae, it would be embarrassing for him too!

At that moment, he supposed he could understand Jongdae a bit more. How he must have felt, having Chanyeol obsessed with him for 24 hours. He was probably humiliated. More than Chanyeol was. Hell, Chanyeol did not even have any memories of it, Jongdae had been nice enough to erase them for him to spare him the embarrassment (even though part of Chanyeol wanted to know what had happened).

Also, Jongdae had done a good job covering it up. Close to no one seemed to know, after all. It was probably because he didn’t want anyone to hear about his slip-up. He must have felt horrible. Chanyeol was almost sorry for him. Almost.

  
  


When all his lessons for the day were over, Chanyeol decided to head for the library to find out what went wrong with the Amortentia. Of course, he could have asked his mother, she knew about everything there is to be known about potions, but if he wrote her a letter he wouldn’t get a reply until after a couple of days. Chanyeol could not wait for that long. Besides, his mum might get suspicious if he asked something strange like that.

Chanyeol knew he wouldn’t find the answer to his question in any normal library book, so he had managed to get a letter of approval from his Potions teacher to borrow a book from the restricted section. It had been easy. All he had to say was that he wanted to study some more about love potions and the effects of them. The teacher had been delighted that his most talented sixth year student finally showed some interest in the subject he was so good at in practice, but not in theory.

Chanyeol slipped the letter to Madam Pince, who read the title out loud and eyed him suspiciously, but said nothing more and went to get him the book.

  
  


Chanyeol soon found himself on a library chair, holding the school’s only copy of _Love Potions: A Guide to Some of the Most Dangerous Elixirs Known to Mankind_ in his hands. It was rather old, but not very worn-looking, like it never had been read before. The top of the book was covered with a thick layer of dust.

Chanyeol immediately opened the book at the index, and found that the different love potions were listed in alphabetical order. A as in Amortentia was at the very beginning of the book, just after the foreword and introduction. He began to read.

“ _Amortentia is the most powerful love potion in the world. It is distinctive for its mother-of-pearl sheen-_ ”

Wait, he knew this already. It wasn’t important. Chanyeol skimmed through the page, trying to find something relevant to his research. There was a description on how to make it, several warnings, and finally a headline that said “ _Uses_ ”. In the block of text below that, Chanyeol finally found something that caught his interest.

“ _To trick the unsuspecting victim to consume the Amortentia, many witches and wizards have slipped some into the victim’s food or drink. Of course, the Amortentia can be mixed with anything, which makes it more convenient-_ ”

So it could be mixed with water, then. Chanyeol felt a bit disappointed, he had thought he was onto something with that idea. But what could have gone wrong, if that wasn’t the case? It could not be the potion itself, it had after all worked when they tested it. It was just that it didn’t work on Jongdae… Was he immune? Could people even be immune to love potions? Chanyeol leaned back in his chair, tilting it backwards, deep in thought.

Eyeing through the rest of the page, Chanyeol spotted the headline “ _Sources of Error_ ” at the very bottom. He suddenly felt excited; this was what he had been looking for from the start. Leaning his chair back even more than before, trying to make himself comfortable, Chanyeol tensely started to read.

“ _Being the most powerful of all love potions, if you have managed to successfully produce the Amortentia it should work in any instance. However, if it does fail to achieve its desired effects, there is only one reason known to be the possible source of failure._ ”

This was it, this must be why the prank went wrong, he was about to find out now… Chanyeol felt so excited he couldn’t sit still, balancing the chair on its back legs, he turned his gaze to the page again-

“ _The Amortentia has no effect on the victim if they are already in love with the potion maker._ ”

Chanyeol overturned his chair, falling backwards onto the floor.

  
  


After being chased out of the library for _causing a ruckus_ , Chanyeol wandered back to his common room. However, he stopped when he was almost there, realising that people would be in there. His friends. It was very unlike him, but he would rather be alone with his thoughts at the moment. Chanyeol therefore settled for an empty classroom, sitting down at one of the desks.

It had to be wrong. Or, more specifically, there had to be more reasons to failure than the one listed in the book. It even said that there was only one _known_ source of error, maybe there were more that were still unknown. That book seemed rather old, after all. Perhaps more had been discovered…

But really, what else could it be? The idea of Jongdae being immune to love potions was ridiculous, it was not even possible. And it had been a perfectly produced Amortentia, _the most powerful love potion of all_ , so it couldn’t just have stopped working. So perhaps the only believable explanation was the one in the book… That Jongdae was in love with him.

No. That was even more ridiculous. It could not be true. Jongdae _hated_ him. He had even stated it himself. Additionally, what kind of person does horrible pranks on the guy they have a crush on?

It was unthinkable. They were both boys, too. And Jongdae was really close with Hyuna, one of the most gorgeous girls in school. Why in the world would he even like Chanyeol, someone he had despised ever since that accident in their first year?

Seriously, the mere idea of Jongdae liking him was… laughable. And, _if_ he liked him…

Chanyeol felt very hot all of a sudden. This was kind of uncomfortable to think about. It must be that, since the room was actually quite cold. His stomach felt a bit weird, too… What if he was getting sick? Directing one hand to his forehead to check his temperature, Chanyeol found that it was a little bit hotter than normal. So were his cheeks. Perhaps he should go back to the dormitories. Get some rest. Try not to think about… _this_.

  
  


So, Chanyeol told himself _not_ to think about what he’d read, plenty of times during the rest of the week. It was easy to tell himself that, but on the other hand very difficult to actually do what he was told. It was as though the idea had planted itself in his head, and was growing like a beanstalk; he couldn’t get rid of it.

Every time he saw someone with short black hair in Slytherin coloured robes he immediately started thinking of Jongdae, even if it wasn’t him. The times it did turn out to be Jongdae, though, Chanyeol did not let his warm cheeks and quickly increasing heartbeat stop him from observing the other’s every little move. He found that Jongdae seemed to like to observe him too, he often moved his gaze to Chanyeol’s direction only to rapidly remove it when noticing that Chanyeol was looking at him as well. Chanyeol’s belly usually did a flip whenever it happened, but he also felt a bit worried as it only seemed to confirm what the book had told him.

While watching Jongdae, Chanyeol also noticed a bunch of small things he had never thought of before. Things like the fact that Jongdae smiled slightly to himself every time he answered a question right in class. Or that he had a tendency to lick his lips a lot when he was nervous. And that he would make this cute whiny sound when his friends weren’t paying him any attention. Jongdae also seemed to like sweet stuff, doing things like spreading a thick layer of jam on his toast during breakfast, and even bringing Sugarquills to class (Chanyeol had been concerned at first when he spotted Jongdae licking his quill, before realising it was a fake one from Honeydukes).

After a day or two Jongdae probably noticed that Chanyeol was watching him more than before, and his solution to that problem was to avoid Chanyeol more fervently than ever, to Chanyeol’s disappointment. Obviously, none of them pranked the other during the last couple of days, it was evident that something had happened between them. Even Chanyeol’s friends seemed to notice.

When the two of them were on their own, Amber straightforwardly asked Chanyeol why he was so obsessed with watching Jongdae. Chanyeol did not know what to answer at first.

“I, um, he’s been acting really suspiciously lately and I think he might be up to something…” he said, but Amber looked sceptical.

“Yeah, sure”, she replied, a hint of sarcasm in her voice. “Why don’t you tell me what’s up?”

Chanyeol sighed, already giving in. He did sometimes find it hard to keep things to himself. It was kind of relieving to get to talk to someone about what was bothering him. Someone who would probably be understanding.

He told Amber about everything that had happened these last couple of days, from the Potions lesson to reading that book in the library, while Amber listened with interest. Chanyeol tried to tell it in such a way so that the whole The-book-suggested-Jongdae-liked-him revelation came as a big surprise, but Amber did not seem too shocked. Instead, she smiled amusedly.

“Ah, Chanyeol, you’ve really made things complicated for yourself”, she said, and Chanyeol frowned.

“Me? Jongdae was the one who started all this, blame him instead! If he hadn’t come up with that _brilliant prank_ our relationship would still be like the usual”, he argued, then added sadly, “… Now he won’t even acknowledge my existence.”

“Well, maybe something did happen during the time you were affected by the love potion”, Amber suggested, “something that made him realise his feelings for you.”

Chanyeol shook his head in disbelief.

“Do _you_ think so too?! You think he likes me? That is so ridiculous! It can’t be true! He _hates_ me!”

“I’m not saying I think he likes you, y'know. But it’s very possible. Why don’t you think so?”

“I’m… He…” Chanyeol struggled, it was after all the only plausible explanation for his failure to make the Amortentia work on Jongdae… “He hates me. He’s said so himself like a thousand times. And he plays pranks on me. Kind of horrible ones, too.”

Chanyeol thought that could be solid proof enough, but Amber just chuckled.

“Don’t you think he’s rather obsessed with you, though? Always going out of his way to plan those pranks, following you around unsneakily, constantly talking about you behind your back… for more than five years? Isn’t that a little of an overreaction to some silly accident when you two were kids? Maybe he has a huge crush on you but hasn’t realised it until now. Thought he just disliked you.”

Chanyeol swallowed; Amber’s theory made sense. Yet, it still felt so… unlikely.

“Yeah, but…” he started carefully, “he’s a boy and I am a boy, too. Isn’t that pretty unusual? Do you really think Jongdae is… _like that_?”

“What do you mean, _like that_? That he’s gay?”

Chanyeol felt his face heat up, but tried to ignore it. The whole… boys who liked other boys thing was of course something he had heard of, there was a Hufflepuff boy who dated a boy from Chanyeol’s house when Chanyeol was in his second year. The two boys were seventh years, so it was not like Chanyeol saw them a lot, and… that was all. He hadn’t ever really thought of the fact that there had to be more boys like that, especially not people he knew. Or, people he thought he knew.

“Uh, yes… that.”

“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, is there? You shouldn’t be so unused to it by now, I like both boys and girls and I told you that years ago.”

Yes, of course, but she was _Amber_. She was different. Chanyeol had known that for a really long time. Jongdae being like that was a complete surprise. If it was true, that is.

Chanyeol was kind of used to girls liking him. It was not like a lot of them did, but it had happened a few times. He had even dated one for two months in his fourth year. It felt really flattering whenever a girl liked him, it was nice. Having a boy liking him, however, was… strange, for lack of a better word. Different. It probably shouldn’t be, he was being silly, but still. He was unsure of how he felt about that. Especially when said boy was _Jongdae_.

“Okay, but… I still don’t understand why he’d like me. Like, he’s friends with both Hyuna Kim and Kris Wu and I don’t get why he’d like me, someone who just likes to do pranks on him, instead of any of them.”

“Um, I can’t tell you that”, Amber shrugged, “I also have no idea. I mean, Hyuna is gorgeous but if he doesn’t like girls at all it’s obvious he wouldn’t like her that way. And that Kris Wu guy seems a little bit like a nutter, even if he’s good at Quidditch. I don’t really see why he would go for a dork like you, though.”

Chanyeol made an offended expression and Amber snorted, patting him consolingly on the shoulder.

“Maybe he’s had strong feelings for you all along, but expressed them as hate. I don’t know. I suck at this kind of love and relationship stuff, you know. I think you should go confront him about it, instead of the two of you just going around like this, being hopeless, trying to watch each other while simultaneously trying to ignore each other’s existence. You’re acting like five-year-olds.”

“Confront him? Like, tell him what I’ve read?” asked Chanyeol, pretending not to have heard the last thing Amber had said.

“What you think”, Amber said, “ask him how he feels. Try to seem understanding and not like you want to force the answer out of him. This is probably even harder for him than it is for you.”

“But… What if… What if he actually _does_ like me? What do I do then?”

“How should I know? Do what you feel like. If you figure you like him back, then go for it. It might be a bit strange at first to date the guy who used to be your archenemy, but… yeah. It’ll probably work out.”

“I’m, he, I mean, I don’t _like_ him, I just-” Chanyeol stammered, feeling somewhat humiliated. Amber snorted.

“You could probably fry an egg on your face, man. Calm down. I wasn’t suggesting anything.”

“I just want to find out if it’s true, okay? The thought of him… possibly liking me is really, er, I don’t know, bothersome. I don’t know how to feel about that. It’s weird.”

Amber nodded.

“Ask him, then. Don’t overcomplicate things.”

“Yeah… Yes, I should do that.”

  
  


The next day it finally happened. The snowstorm Chanyeol had predicted came at last. It was later than he had thought, sure, but its size made up for it. When everyone woke up in the morning the height of the layer of snow reached a metre or so over the ground. A drastic change from the previous evening, when there had been no signs of snow whatsoever.

After quickly finishing breakfast, Chanyeol and his friends went outside to get a closer look on the snow, but mainly to throw as much as they could on each other in one of the funnest snowball fights Chanyeol’d ever had. It was difficult to move around, since the layer of snow reached up to their stomachs and sometimes even above that, so it was pretty much impossible to avoid getting hit by snowballs. Additionally, the air was still thick with snowflakes falling from the sky. This meant that Chanyeol and his friends arrived to their first lesson in a very wet and cold state, water from the melting snow on their clothes dripping all over the floor before their teacher felt the need to perform drying charms on them.

It was after that lesson that Chanyeol decided to confront Jongdae. He had time, there were about thirty minutes until their next classes started. Chanyeol was going to have Care of Magical Creatures outside in the snowy weather, which he greatly looked forward to, while Jongdae had Divination (Chanyeol had always wondered how a clever person like Jongdae could believe in that kind of rubbish, but okay).

Chanyeol found Jongdae on his walk to the Divination classroom, probably aiming to arrive early as usual. He was lucky, because Jongdae was still by himself, not having met up with Hyuna (who also had Divination).

“Jongdae”, Chanyeol uttered as he reached the other. The mentioned boy didn’t even look at him, continuing his walk as if he hadn’t heard him (but Chanyeol was sure he did, judging by the way he twitched when Chanyeol said his name).

“Jongdae”, Chanyeol said again, and when Jongdae continued ignoring him Chanyeol grabbed his arm lightly.

“What are you-”

“Jongdae, I know you’re not deaf.”

The shorter boy looked up at him with a venomous expression, one that would normally get Chanyeol to back off, but this time Chanyeol was too determined. He was going to talk it out with Jongdae. Now.

“Alright, what do you want?” Jongdae asked with irritation lining his voice.

“I want to talk to you.”

“You’re talking right now. Go on.”

Chanyeol sighed.

“I’d like to do it somewhere more private”, he said, looking around. There were students walking the corridors, plenty of them passing by, and Chanyeol did not want anyone to overhear. This was a quite sensitive matter, after all.

“…Why?” Jongdae eyed him suspiciously.

“Well, it’s just… Trust me, you don’t want anyone to hear what I’m going to ask you.”

“That sounds really shady, you know. Do you actually think I’ll agree to be alone with you somewhere? Is this another stupid prank?”

_Are you really the right person to call my pranks stupid_ , Chanyeol immediately thought but decided not to say it out loud. He needed to be nice and sincere with Jongdae to make this work.

“Just… I’ll make it quick! It’s just one question! If you’re really suspicious I can put my wand away, I won’t have any use for it, anyway.”

Jongdae’s eyes widened a tiny bit, but he still did not say anything.

“Please…?” Chanyeol persisted. Jongdae looked him in the eyes, then looked away, sighing resignedly.

“Okay then. But give me your wand first.”

Chanyeol happily gave Jongdae his wand, almost celebrating internally. He then pointed to a door on their right.

“I think that classroom’s empty, we can talk in there.”

When they had situated themselves inside the room, Jongdae leaning against the desk he had put Chanyeol’s wand on, Chanyeol felt a bit sweaty. Wiping the palms of his hands on his robes, Chanyeol cleared his throat, ready to start saying what he had brought them there to say.

Except… he didn’t. It felt like something was blocking his throat. His tongue remained still in his mouth. His lips did not move at all, either.

“Well? What did you want?” Jongdae asked, clearly impatient; it was obvious he wanted this done and over with.

“Er…” Chanyeol finally uttered, at least it was something. He didn’t know what to say next, though. It felt like an easy thing to walk up to Jongdae, ask him if he fancied him, talk it out like two grown-up human beings. But it was a lot more difficult to do it for real. Jongdae’s presence just made things so much harder.

Wiping his sweaty palms a second time, Chanyeol decided he had to at least say something.

“Er, yes, I wanted to know… are you, you know, _like that_?”

…That was not what he was supposed to say.

“Like what? What do you mean?”

“Well, like, uh… I mean, are you… gay?” Chanyeol said before he could stop himself. His brain caught up half a second later, but that was too late. He couldn’t take it back now.

Jongdae _very_ visibly twitched, his whole body seemed to go tense. After the initial shock Jongdae looked enraged, judging by the way his brows furrowed and his mouth formed a straight, narrow line.

“ _What_ makes you ask me that?! If you brought me here to make fun of me, I might as well leave”, he almost growled, looking flustered, tripping over his own step as he tried to make his way out of the room.

“No, no, wait, that was not what I was supposed to-” Chanyeol rushed forward, attempting to stop Jongdae from leaving.

“I- I’m sorry, but you have to listen-”

“Why should I? I was just about to take you seriously for once but then you…”

Jongdae struggled to get to the door, but Chanyeol was blocking it.

“No! Please. Listen. I didn’t mean to ask you that. Sorry. But there is something that I really need to talk to you about.”

Chanyeol looked Jongdae in the eyes again, trying to look as sincere as possible. Jongdae looked away, seemingly by instinct, but stopped in his tracks. He even took a couple of steps backwards.

“Okay. Just say whatever rude things you want about me, I don’t care. Although I wish you could treat me like you treat everyone else, sometimes.”

Jongdae blushed bright red after that, that last part was probably not intended to be said out loud. Chanyeol almost felt bad for him at first, but then he realised it had to be Jongdae’s plan to make _him_ feel like the villain. Even though Jongdae was the one who despised him, not the other way around; Chanyeol just did fun pranks on him once in a while, without any hard feelings involved…

“I’m… I’m not going to say rude things. And, um, just so you know, I don’t have anything against gay people.”

Jongdae snorted.

“Terrific, approval from Chanyeol Park, I feel honoured”, he said sarcastically.

“No, I just meant- Wait, does that mean you _are_ gay?” Chanyeol’s eyes widened, not even thinking about the fact that he had said the word he couldn’t even speak of yesterday, plenty of times in this conversation.

Jongdae nervously licked his lips, a pretty shade of red still apparent on his cheekbones, then did not look up as he mumbled,

“What’s it to _you_?”

“It’s… actually… What I wanted to ask from the beginning was if, um, if…” Chanyeol trailed off. There was a big lump in his throat that made it difficult to convey what he wanted to say. Why was this so hard to ask?!

“If… if you _like_ me”, he finally uttered, and the silence that followed was one of the worst things Chanyeol had ever experienced.

Jongdae had not answered him yet, but judging from how the he reacted to the question Chanyeol could probably guess the answer. _Yes_. Chanyeol swallowed down the lump in his throat, almost physically feeling it hit the bottom of his stomach.

When he had heard Chanyeol’s words, Jongdae’s face was drained of all the red that had prettily decorated his cheeks, instead turning white. Persistently looking down, biting his lip, he stayed like that for a while. Without saying anything. It pretty much confirmed Chanyeol’s suspicions. If the answer had been no, Jongdae would’ve just laughed it off, not just stood there looking like his best friend just had been run over by the Hogwarts Express.

Finally, Jongdae actually did laugh a little. It sounded kind of high-pitched and unnatural, however, making it less believable.

“D-don’t flatter yourself, Park. What is- What is wrong with you… What makes you think I would _ever_ find your stupid face attractive?” Jongdae managed to say, looking at Chanyeol briefly before letting his gaze sink to the floor again.

“In fact… I have my reasons. A few days ago, during Potions… I successfully made the Amortentia, remember?”

“Have you come here to brag?” asked Jongdae sourly.

“No, I’ll just… I’ll get to the point. I wanted revenge for your love potion prank, so I decided to make you drink the Amortentia I made. I poured some into your water while you were unconscious in the hospital wing… and yeah, you drank it.”

“Okay, wait”, Jongdae interrupted, “I don’t believe you. I can’t recall being affected by that love potion during the whole day, can you? If that was your prank, you _failed_. Also, why are you accusing me of liking you when you’re the one who _deliberately_ tried to make me fall for you?”

Chanyeol sighed. Jongdae seemed very keen on proving him wrong.

“No, I know, it did not work, I’ll get to that. And I didn’t think the prank through, okay? Right, call me stupid or whatever, but I didn’t think of the consequences. I just wanted revenge. Kinda realised afterwards that it was a pretty dumb prank. Can I continue?”

Jongdae did not answer, but Chanyeol continued talking nonetheless.

“I watched you the whole day and the love potion didn’t affect you. So I looked it up in the library, in a book about love potions, and found that… Er, well, the book said that the only reason the Amortentia wouldn’t work is if the person is in lo- I mean, likes you already.”

There was a couple of seconds of that unsettling silence again.

“No”, Jongdae said quietly after a while. Chanyeol noticed that his fingers were trembling.

“No what?”

“You’re wrong”, Jongdae continued, his voice a little louder than before. “This is just something you’ve come up with to humiliate me, why do you have to be such a horrible person, what have I done to-”

Jongdae stopped talking to release a shaky sigh. He still refused to look at Chanyeol.

Chanyeol did feel kind of horrible. He had not meant to hurt Jongdae’s feelings or anything, and it was obvious how humiliated Jongdae was. It was like… Chanyeol had exposed his deepest, most shameful secret. Chanyeol needed to reassure Jongdae that it was okay, he was alright with Jongdae’s feelings for him, he wouldn’t tell anyone…

Taking a step closer to Jongdae, Chanyeol put his thumb under Jongdae’s chin, lifting his face gently. Glancing at his mouth, his pretty lips, Chanyeol could think of something else he could do to soothe Jongdae… wait. Chanyeol managed to cancel his process of thought in the right moment, instead turning his gaze to Jongdae’s eyes. When Jongdae was finally looking at him, although in a hesitant manner, Chanyeol gathered the courage to speak again. Though, for some reason, his voice was merely a whisper.

“Look, I don’t-”

What Chanyeol was about to say was left unfinished when a voice spoke up. A new voice.

“I couldn’t help but listen in on what you two were talking about, and it seems like I was lucky to overhear something really embarrassing! How would you feel if the whole school got to know?”

A loud, malicious laughter was heard and Chanyeol and Jongdae both turned to spot the colourful figure of Peeves the poltergeist, who was floating in the direction of the door. Chanyeol barely had the time to react until Peeves opened his wide mouth again.

“I’ll just open this door, and…”

“No!” Chanyeol finally managed to exclaim, understanding what Peeves was about to do. He knew Peeves loved annoying the students, but sometimes it felt like the poltergeist had something against him personally.

“Sorry, I didn’t hear you… Actually, no, I’m not sorry. Revenge for that time you blamed one of your stupid pranks on me, Parky”, Peeves said and opened the door. Chanyeol’s entire body went ice cold.

“Everyone! Do you know what I just heard?!” Peeves shouted on the top of his lungs, “Kim, the small, skinny Slytherin kid, likes Park, the Gryffindor who looks like a tall house-elf!”

Peeves floated out of the classroom and continued to move along the corridor outside, smiling maliciously as though he had received the best treat imaginable.

“Kim likes Pa-ark! Kim fancies Pa-aaark! Kim has an itty bitty teenie weenie crush on Park!” he chanted, loud enough for all the students in the corridor to hear. Chanyeol rushed out of the door, panicking.

“Shut up!” he shouted at Peeves’s direction, at the same time turning to the students and telling them, “Don’t listen to him, he’s talking rubbish!”

He could do nothing to stop Peeves, as his eyes followed the poltergeist’s figure rounding the corner at the end of the corridor, still chanting loudly. Feeling like the stares from all the pupils in the corridor were tearing his (hopefully) cool-looking façade apart, Chanyeol turned to face Jongdae, who was quickly making his way towards him.

“J-Jongdae, I-” Chanyeol started but Jongdae passed him by in the doorway, running off to the opposite direction to Peeves. He was moving so fast that Chanyeol couldn’t see his facial expression. Chanyeol could imagine what it looked like, though.

Right now, he felt like the worst person in the world.

  
  


Chanyeol did not see a trace of Jongdae during the rest of the day. After Chanyeol’s lesson in Care of Magical Creatures they were supposed to have Charms together, but Jongdae did not show up. He was absent from all the meals, too; Chanyeol couldn’t spot him eating with his friends at the Slytherin table. After sneaking into the hospital wing to check if he was there (which he was not), Chanyeol concluded that Jongdae most likely was in his common room or dormitory. He probably didn’t want to face people after what had happened. Chanyeol could understand him.

However, Chanyeol felt more brave (he was a Gryffindor after all). Then again, it might be because he wasn’t the one who was rumoured to fancy his school-life-long archenemy. He was just on the receiving end of the affections. Of course, that still made people stop and stare at him in corridors, and whisper unsubtly behind his back during class. Peeves seemed to have made the rumours spread fast.

Most students in the school at least recognised him and Jongdae, mainly because of their so-called rivalry of a relationship, with the way the played obnoxious pranks on each other. So what Peeves had said must have come as a bit of a shock to the majority of them. To Chanyeol’s relief, a lot of the students didn’t believe in the rumours, finding them too bizarre to be true. Chanyeol would have thought so too, if he didn’t know how it really was. That Jongdae actually was in lo-, or, liked him.

Because, even though he hadn’t directly said it, Jongdae had still confirmed Chanyeol’s suspicions earlier that day. Chanyeol was no super investigator, but it had been pretty obvious. With how shaky Jongdae had been, and his horrified reaction when Chanyeol had uncovered his secret.

It was weird how things could change. Chanyeol heard people whisper about Jongdae at least five times behind his back, and instead of thinking something along the lines of _that’s what you get_ , Chanyeol felt the need to protect him. After all, Jongdae could not help how he felt. One time he had even heard someone say something rude about the fact that Jongdae fancied boys, and Chanyeol had to hold himself back from not confronting the guy about it. He would only make things worse by creating drama. The best thing he could do was pretty much to ignore the rumour as much as possible, then laugh it off if someone mentioned it to his face.

  
  


As Chanyeol went to bed that evening, it was hard to think about something else than what had happened with Jongdae. One thought in particular kept bothering him, and would not stop. It was about how _he_ felt. Because he knew about Jongdae’s feelings, but he was not sure… how he felt himself. About Jongdae.

Jongdae was good-looking, he had to admit. Jongdae was smart, good at most subjects, and clever enough to come up with all those pranks. Jongdae was funny, he definitely had humour. Jongdae was nice, not to him, but to pretty much everyone else. Jongdae was hardworking. Jongdae was creative. Jongdae was ambitious. Jongdae was confident, but still rather modest. Jongdae was…

He was not just good-looking, now that Chanyeol thought about it. Of course, he had never thought that Jongdae was _ugly_ , but… he had not considered the opposite either. The sharp features of his face, his cheekbones, his neat eyebrows. Jongdae’s cute round ears, the eyes that practically shone with mischief, the long eyelashes. The way his short, black hair was always in a mess, but rather handsomely so. Why did Chanyeol suddenly notice all this stuff when he had found out that Jongdae liked him? And it was not exactly in an envious way either, Chanyeol was content with how he looked, it was more… Well. It couldn’t be attraction, could it? He was not, um, _like that_ , was he?

Jongdae’s lips. Chanyeol had been close to doing something he _shouldn’t be doing_ when he was trying to assure Jongdae everything was okay. Something that he wouldn’t even think of if he wasn’t at all attracted to Jongdae. But Chanyeol liked girls. He had even dated one before. And his crushes when he was little had always been girls. Well, of course, that did not have to mean he couldn’t like boys too, but… the thought of it had just never crossed his mind. That he could be… _like that_. Not straight.

Chanyeol felt a bit silly. Why hadn’t he ever seen that possibility before? It was like… it hadn’t existed. He knew about gay and bi people, of course, but the thought of being like that himself was just never present in his mind. But, if Jongdae could like boys, why couldn’t he?

Chanyeol went to sleep at last, still unsure about his own feelings, but at least he has something to consider. He could do that the next day.

  
  


The dream Chanyeol had that night was not really a dream, more like a memory.

It was from his third year, he believed, before he had joined the Quidditch team (he had done that in his fourth year, when most of their best players had graduated and the team needed some “fresh meat”).

The first game of the Quidditch season was traditionally the Gryffindor versus Slytherin match, and like almost all of the students Chanyeol had gone to watch the game with his friends. On his way there Chanyeol had spotted Jongdae, which was rare since Jongdae wasn’t too interested in Quidditch (Chanyeol supposed he was there to show his support for Kris and his housemates).

When they had both seen each other, Chanyeol and Jongdae, being rather childish thirteen-year-olds, immediately started arguing about which house would win the match. It had turned out Chanyeol was right, and he could not resist rubbing it in when he bumped into Jongdae after the game. It had been quite fun to tease him like that, Chanyeol recalled.

The next day, however, Jongdae made Chanyeol’s porridge explode during breakfast. As a revenge. It had also been a bit humorous, Chanyeol had to admit, and pretty harmless too. One of his friends removed the porridge that had splattered all over Chanyeol with the use of a simple charm, and Chanyeol had had a good laugh, too, in spite of being the victim of the prank. In all, it was a nice memory.

  
  


When Chanyeol woke up, it was early in the morning. All of the other boys in his dormitory seemed to be asleep. Wishing he was still asleep as well, Chanyeol involuntarily started thinking about the memory.

It was by no means unique; things like that had happened very often, all the way from his first year until, well, a week or so ago. It was a fun time, Chanyeol realised. He had enjoyed pranking Jongdae and he knew Jongdae had fun pranking him too. There were no hard feelings, or, well. At least not on his side. He did not hate Jongdae, he was just having fun messing around with him.

Chanyeol found himself missing the kind of relationship they’d had. What he had ruined yesterday, when he confronted Jongdae. He had not meant to do that. Chanyeol just wanted to, he didn’t know, clear things up between them so they could return to normal. It was not his intention to hurt Jongdae and make things worse. Was there a way for him to fix this? To make everything better again?

Chanyeol really had to do something.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> he fucked up


	3. Part 3: Frosty Feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i aM FINALLY DONE *sweats* i am so so so sorry for uploading this part so late!! i was actually halfway done with this chapter when i published the other two, but since then i've basically had no free time at all, so i haven't been able to finish it until now..... i hope you didn't lose interest in this while you waited ;;;;
> 
> also, before you start reading, a little disclaimer: i know close to nothing about how christmas is celebrated in the UK, as i'm (obviously) not british. i just gathered what I had read in the harry potter books, lol. things are very different in my country (besides, i myself don't celebrate it much at all).
> 
> hope this chapter won't make you too disappointed! ;;

It was the very last day of the term. After that, the holidays were starting, and most of the students would go home to celebrate with their families. Therefore, the atmosphere was rather festive; Christmas was soon, after all. All of their tests were over, and today would just be a calm and relaxing day, for a change, before everyone would throw small holiday parties in their respective common rooms.

Jongdae, however, was staying in bed. He would rather avoid all the celebrations today, not interact with the other students at all. Skipping school today proved to be easy, he hadn’t needed to come up with a good excuse. His dormmates had understood. They had not even questioned him.

Jongdae felt a little bit like a coward for not going out there, facing what he feared. And he usually didn’t skip classes. But he was only skipping one day of school, and it was the last of the term, so he would not miss anything important anyway. It was significantly better to stay in bed than have people stare at him, judge him, and worst of all give Chanyeol the pleasure of having humiliated him.

It had turned out just like his Divination teacher had predicted; what had happened last week made what he feared come true. His deepest secret was exposed, and now he knew what it was, too. Jongdae had kind of figured it out a couple of days ago, frustrated with himself for not noticing it before.

Yes, he had… feelings for Chanyeol. The worst of feelings. Really, he could’ve liked anyone else, _anyone_ , and it would not have been as horrible as this. It could have been Hyuna, Kris, his Divination teacher, Peeves, one of Chanyeol’s obnoxious friends… Just not Chanyeol himself. Someone he had always believed he hated.

Jongdae actually figured it had something to do with that. That he’d probably had strong feelings for Chanyeol all along, but thought it was hate instead of… the opposite. _Shit_. Everything about Chanyeol was so incredibly attractive, and Jongdae hated himself for thinking so. However, it was inevitable. Just… his tall, slim figure, his nice skin, his face, the pretty eyes, the round lips, his stupid huge ears… his deep voice and long neck and big hands and obnoxious personality… Right now Jongdae felt like an actual piece of rubbish, someone who would belong in a garbage bin.

He’d had the feeling since the accident with the love potion, but had chosen to ignore it. Thinking it would go away after Chanyeol returned to his normal state of mind. It was not until that horrific lesson in Potions that Jongdae let himself consider the possibility that he had inappropriate feelings about Chanyeol. The scent from their teacher’s Amortentia made him realise it; Jongdae had clearly smelled the distinguishable scent of Chanyeol, the same thing he had smelled when they had lunch together on the hill.

The realisation was one of the scariest things Jongdae had experienced. Therefore he had not been able to concentrate during the lesson, either, and because of that failing terribly. Humiliating himself in front of his classmates. Ending up in the hospital wing. With Chanyeol, of all people, whose presence seemed to follow him as if it were a bad joke.

The only thing Jongdae could think of that was more horrifying than his own realisation was _Chanyeol’s_ realisation. After coming to terms with the fact that he was attracted to that bad excuse for a human being, Jongdae decided it would be fine as long as he would be able to cover it up. If nobody knew, it wouldn’t matter. He only had a year and a half left of school, he could manage.

However, it did not take a long time until someone discovered about his secret. Only a couple of days. And of course that someone had to be Chanyeol, too. If fate had a face Jongdae would spit in it.

The conversation he had with Chanyeol the day before was the _worst_ thing that could have happened. Chanyeol had found out about his secret in the most bizarre of ways, and then made sure to have the entire school know about it. What could possibly be worse than that?

Jongdae pulled his covers tightly around him. There was no way he could face the rest of the school today. It was after all impossible for him to cast memory charms on the entire student body. Sighing deeply, he leaned back into his bed and drifted off to sleep.

  
  


His day was mostly spent by sleeping, since there were not a lot of other things he could do. One time Jongdae read through his Charms textbook, then practised the nonverbal levitation charm. To his relief, he succeeded a couple of times with levitating the book above ground. All thanks to the fact that Chanyeol wasn’t around.

Sometimes he would think of what had happened about a week ago, when his prank had gone wrong. When Chanyeol had been _nice_. When he had almost… _kissed_ him. Even though he tried not to, Jongdae could not help but imagine how things could’ve turned out if the potion had worked a little bit longer… He was so ashamed of himself.

Around lunchtime, Kris came to his dorm, carrying a plate of shepherd’s pie in his hands.

“JD, how are you? Brought you some lunch”, he said and waved carelessly with the plate, almost dropping the contents to the floor.

“I’m alright… and thanks”, Jongdae replied, and realised for the first time that day how incredibly hungry he was. He had not eaten breakfast, after all.

“The weather today is great. There’s snow everywhere, but it isn’t cold enough to make your hands freeze off. It’s not the ideal Quidditch weather but I’m going to try anyway. You should also go outside a bit”, Kris said while Jongdae was busy eating.

“What are you, my mother?” Jongdae paused to say, mouth still filled with half-chewed food.

“No, you do what you want, but… hiding here won’t make things any better, you know. Besides, things are not so bad. Most people don’t even seem to believe the rumours. They think they’re too absurd to be true.”

_Well, the truth is rather absurd_ , Jongdae thought, but he did not feel like telling Kris that. It was therefore silent between them for a while, the only sounds coming from Jongdae as he ate.

“I think you should talk to him”, Kris uttered when Jongdae was finished.

“Who’s _him_?” Jongdae asked, even though he was sure who Kris was referring to.

“Park”, Kris replied, confirming Jongdae’s suspicions. Jongdae raised an eyebrow.

“Why in the world should I talk to him? The less I see of him, the happier I am”, he muttered.

“Well, he did screw up. He might want to explain.”

“What, he managed to make a fool out of me and have the entire school hear about it? Isn’t that what he wanted?”

Kris sighed.

“It doesn’t seem like that”, he said, “he seems regretful.”

“How do _you_ know?” asked Jongdae, what Kris said did not make sense to him. Why would Chanyeol feel regret after doing the ultimate prank?

“He came up to me when I was on my way out of the hall to deliver the food to you. He said that if I was going to talk to you, I should tell you he was sorry, and he didn’t mean to do what he did.”

“He… what?”

“Yeah, I know”, Kris shrugged, “He probably should’ve thought of that before he created those rumours, huh. Well, I still think you should talk to him about this.”

“But, he didn’t…” Jongdae trailed off. He did not want to tell Kris about what really had happened. Not right now.

“Anyway, I should go now, I have class. Catch ya later, JD”, Kris said in a way he probably thought sounded cool, and left. Jongdae kind of wanted him to stay a bit longer, to make him less alone. Now, the only company Jongdae had were his thoughts.

Kris seemed to think Chanyeol had _created_ those rumours, as a prank or something. That was not… exactly what had happened. Now that Jongdae thought about it, it seemed a bit unlikely that Chanyeol had planned it all, like he previously had believed. During their talk yesterday, Chanyeol had almost seemed as nervous as Jongdae had been, and he was genuinely surprised when Peeves had appeared. And he actually tried to keep Peeves from shouting out what he had heard.

But, if humiliating him wasn’t Chanyeol’s intention, then why did he confront Jongdae about his feelings? What could he possibly gain from that, except having the pleasure of making Jongdae absolutely horrified?

  
  


That afternoon, when everyone’s classes were over, Jongdae’s housemates started preparing for the party they were throwing that evening. It was a tradition to have a small party the evening before the holidays started, as most of them would go home the next day; it was kind of a final celebration before parting. Everyone did it, not just the Slytherins. However, parties were usually held in the common rooms of the respective houses, making it a more house-centred event.

When the other boys in Jongdae’s year returned to the dorm they only greeted him briefly before heading for the common room, and at the moment they were probably putting up decorations or perhaps wandering to the kitchens for free food. Jongdae did not feel like joining them. It was strange, how easily affected he was by all of the drama surrounding Chanyeol.

It was not until the party was about to start that Jongdae saw anyone again. Some of Jongdae’s dormmates returned to make themselves ready for the festivities, and every single one of them asked him to join. Jongdae, although a bit reluctantly, said no to all of their requests. They seemed a bit, if not very, surprised since Jongdae probably was the biggest party-goer out of all of them.

“I’ve never seen you like this”, one of them said, “you’re always so, I don’t know, happy… and upbeat.” Jongdae shrugged in reply, not really knowing what to say.

  
  


Jongdae was just about to grab a book to read during his evening of solitude when Kris entered again, this time with neatly styled hair and smelling a bit like Mrs Skower’s All-Purpose Magical Mess Remover.

“JD, come on”, he said vaguely, but it was obvious what he wanted Jongdae to do.

“Why?”

“I can’t have you skipping this party, too. I don’t care if you’re skipping school, but skipping parties is a completely different thing. If I know you well, you actually want to go. Am I right or am I right?”

Jongdae sighed.

“You know why I don’t feel like going.”

“It’s about those silly rumours, huh? I think you’re overreacting. No one seems to care about them except you. I don’t think anyone here believes them, either. Now, come with me”, Kris persisted and pulled Jongdae’s arm lightly. Jongdae sighed a second time but followed Kris to the door anyway.

“Fine.”

  
  


Jongdae had expected people to stare at him, to whisper amongst themselves when he entered the common room, but no such thing happened. Most people did not seem to care about his arrival, and those who did smiled at him (one of his classmates even patted him on the back). Actually, they were rather supportive of him. One person said that only stupid people would believe the rumours, and another even told him that he’d glared at Chanyeol while passing him by in the corridors earlier that day. Jongdae almost felt overwhelmed, telling the guy he didn’t have to do things like that for his sake. The guy just laughed, telling Jongdae he purely did it for his own amusement.

Despite the fact that it was almost Christmas and tacky decorations were in season, the common room had been decorated quite tastefully (Jongdae did not want to think about how it might look like in the Gryffindor common room). Most of the decorations were green, which fit the rest of the interior very well, and even though some of the things were a bit minimalistic the large room was still cosy, just like how it was supposed to be during the winter.

After tasting a few of the snacks that some fifth years had brought from the kitchen, Jongdae spotted Hyuna sitting in the sofa in one of the corners, a place where they usually spent a lot of time. She smiled at him as he sat down next to her.

“Look who’s here! Come to help me suffer through this?”

“Suffer through? Kris said it’d be fun.”

“Well, I said it last year and I’ll say it again: I like my parties less… regulated.”

Jongdae could see what she meant. The teachers were usually strict with parties, and had told them that everyone should be in bed by eleven. Additionally, no alcohol was allowed. Jongdae thought that was quite obvious since most of them were underage, and this was a party for students of all years to take part of (the thought of eleven-year-olds drinking was pretty scary). Besides, right now he was actually relieved that no one had brought any. The few times he had been drunk had been alright, he supposed, but during some of them he had done pretty stupid things. Such as kissing a girl he didn’t know the name of and wasn’t attracted to in his fifth year, all because of some dare.

…Now that he thought about it, he couldn’t ever recall being attracted to a girl at all. Things were starting to make sense.

“Hyuna… how did you find out you liked girls?” he asked before he could regret it.

“Why are you asking that all of a sudden? And well, I don’t really remember, I just… knew. Like, it was obvious from the beginning. It was impossible for me not to like girls”, she explained, and Jongdae took a deep breath. He knew he had to tell someone. Talk to someone who would understand. It would make things easier to deal with.

“If you want to tell me something, you can do that”, Hyuna unexpectedly said, and laid an arm around his shoulders, making him lean against her.

“Er, well, I’m… I’m pretty sure I’m gay”, he managed to utter, feeling his face heat up at a record speed.

“Oh, Jongdae. Lie down”, Hyuna ordered him, and Jongdae lay down in the sofa, his head in Hyuna’s lap. He knew she was being serious, as she usually never called him by his full given name. It was quite comforting, to be taken seriously when he needed it the most.

“I know”, Hyuna then said and Jongdae flinched. He did not expect that either.

“How could you know that? I didn’t know until recently”, he said questioningly. Hyuna started to run her fingers through his hair.

“I could just tell.”

Jongdae scowled.

“That doesn’t make sense.”

“ _You_ don’t make sense”, was Hyuna’s automatic comeback, and Jongdae sighed.

“I know”, he muttered silently.

“Hey, there you two are! Thought I lost you for a minute”, Kris said, appearing in front of them. Sitting down in the armchair opposite them, he then followed up with, “What are you talking about?”

Hyuna glanced down at him and Jongdae took another deep breath.

“I… I just told Hyuna that… I’m gay”, he mumbled.

“You’re _what?_ ” Kris asked, his expression making it evident that he had heard what Jongdae said but didn’t quite believe it.

“I like boys”, Jongdae explained, because apparently he needed to do that.

“You do?! But, since when-”

“Oh, pull yourself together, Krissy boy, it’s not like you haven’t noticed”, Hyuna snapped, silencing Kris who looked like he had some sort of realisation. Jongdae was a bit irritated. It felt like he was being left out on something, something that actually concerned _him_.

“Noticed _what?_ ”

He looked up at Hyuna who continued to comb her fingers through his hair. Jongdae rather liked it, it was calming. Plus, he could spot a couple of guys eyeing him enviously, and that made him enjoy his position even more. He couldn’t help but smirk slightly at them.

“It’s Park, isn’t it? I’m glad you’ve finally realised. Took you some time”, Hyuna then explained and Jongdae automatically twitched at the mention of Chanyeol’s name.

“No, why would I- yes. Yes, it’s… true”, Jongdae admitted, changing his stance halfway through his sentence. He knew it would be pointless to lie at this point; Hyuna had evidently figured it out as well.

“The rumours are true. But don’t tell anyone that I… have feelings for him. They’d probably believe it if it came from you”, Jongdae continued, almost whispering at this point. Feeling ashamed of himself, he rolled over a bit so that he was facing Hyuna’s stomach area instead of having to look at her or Kris’s faces. Or, even worse, letting them look at his.

“We won’t tell anyone, what do you even think of us? Right, Hyuna?” Kris finally said.

“Of course.”

“H-how did you know that I, er, fancy Park?” Jongdae asked as silently as possible, not to have anyone overhearing them. He’d had enough of that for this week.

“Dae, please. It’s been obvious from the start. You’re so obsessed with him”, Hyuna said lightly.

“I’m not obsessed!”

“Keep telling yourself that. You’re always talking about him, you always react when you hear his name being mentioned, you always put in a lot of effort in those pranks, you’re always watching him and you’re really not subtle about these things. I’m surprised it took you this long to figure out your feelings for the guy.”

As per usual, Hyuna was not one to sugarcoat things. She gave him the truth like a slap in the face. Jongdae felt like crawling up and dying right there, in the sofa with his head in Hyuna’s lap. Really, humiliation was too small of a word to describe what he was experiencing at the moment.

“But how did Park find out? I’ve always thought he seemed a bit, er, oblivious.”

“Well, he…” Jongdae considered not telling them, but since he had told them so much already he might as well continue. “A couple of days ago, he wanted revenge for the, um, love potion incident, and tricked me into drinking Amortentia by pouring some in my glass.”

“Amortentia?” asked Kris, as expected.

“It’s the most powerful love potion of all”, Hyuna explained and Jongdae rolled onto his back again, eyeing her face questioningly.

“How’d you know that? You’re not interested in potions.”

“Believe me, I’ve read lots about love potions”, she answered him and Jongdae decided not to pry any further on that subject. He therefore continued speaking, feeling a bit thankful of the fact that someone had decided to play music; it made it less likely for others to overhear their conversation.

“So, yeah, he made me drink some love potion, and… it didn’t work. That’s how he found out. At least, that’s what he told me yesterday.”

“Of course, the Amortentia doesn’t affect the drinker if they are already in love with the potion maker! Brilliant. That’s some solid proof he had!” Hyuna almost snickered.

“Some empathy, please”, Jongdae grunted, he did not need this right now.

“Sorry”, Hyuna said, but didn’t sound very apologetic. “What are you going to do now?”

“What can I do? I don’t ever want to talk to him again, if that’s okay.”

“I should remind you that he told me he was sorry today”, Kris told him, and Jongdae sighed, directing his gaze to a pair of dancing third years instead of looking at his friends.

“Why should I trust him?”

“Yeah, if he was the one who spread the rumours it’s a bit late for him to take it back…” Hyuna added. “Anyway, I’ve always thought he was a bit of a doofus. Amber Liu, on the other hand…” she trailed off with a smile. Jongdae sighed again.

“He… he wasn’t the one who spread the rumours, though. It was, er, Peeves. He overheard our conversation. Park actually tried to stop him, but, um, didn’t succeed. Evidently.”

Jongdae found this a bit hard to admit. Chanyeol being the bad guy was a much simpler explanation. And it made his anger towards him more logical. Somehow, Jongdae still felt that it was Chanyeol’s fault. If he hadn’t wanted to have that conversation with Jongdae in the first place, this would not have happened. Besides, Peeves said something about it being a revenge on Chanyeol for putting the blame on him for one of his pranks once. If Chanyeol hadn’t done that whenever it was, Peeves might have been more merciful (but somehow, Jongdae doubted it).

Both Hyuna and Kris seemed a bit taken aback by this new information, however.

“But… if he didn’t do it, why are you so angry with him?” asked Kris, looking puzzled.

“It was still his fault! He was the one who started it!” Jongdae instinctively defended himself.

“Started what?”

“Everything! If _he_ hadn’t confronted me in the first place, this wouldn’t have happened! If _he_ hadn’t decided to copy my failed prank and give me love potion, he wouldn’t have found out! If _he_ hadn’t flung me up a tree two weeks ago, I wouldn’t have done that stupid prank on him! Actually, if he hadn’t set fire to that essay I had written in our first year, we wouldn’t be enemies at all! We would probably have a good relationship to each other! A _normal_ one! Perhaps we’d even be _friends!_ ”

Jongdae paused to take a shaky breath, then continued to speak, voice merely a whisper.

“And then my attraction to him wouldn’t be as strange, if we were already close… Maybe he’d like me back, too… I could’ve realised it earlier and maybe, just maybe, we would already be together…”

Jongdae did not realise he was crying until Kris pointed it out for him.

  
  


That night, Jongdae had a difficult time sleeping. He drifted on and off to sleep, constantly in a state of being half-awake and half-asleep. That made it hard for him to separate his thoughts from his dreams; it was as though he were too awake to dream and too asleep to think. The whole experience was very bothersome, since he was feeling incredibly tired and definitely in need of some proper rest.

It was somewhere in that state that the memory came to him. The memory of the very first time he and Chanyeol had been in an argument, the time that made them the enemies they’d been since then. Therefore it was of great importance, as it was the reason to why Jongdae had started despising Chanyeol like he done for so many years.

Thinking back, Jongdae had always blamed Chanyeol for the outcome of their relationship, but as he remembered what had happened in detail, it seemed unlikely. Actually, it felt like it was more Jongdae’s fault that anyone else’s.

  
  


It happened about a month into their first year. Jongdae was trying his best to be a diligent and hardworking student, and so far he had been doing alright. His parents said they were proud of him, and that was what mattered the most.

Even though it was not his favourite subject, Jongdae was exceptionally good at Charms. He therefore took the subject seriously; if he did well now he had to continue doing well in the future, too. Besides, it was actually quite fun to learn and master the spells he had seen his parents use, dreaming that one day he would have the same magical skills as them.

One lesson, Jongdae had mastered a simple wand-lighting charm earlier than most of his classmates, and therefore had some extra time to work on his essay, which was supposed to be done before their next Charms lesson later that week. Jongdae was pretty good at memorising theory, if he did say so himself, and had written a lot more than necessary. But it was all for the extra points, his teacher would be proud of him and give him top marks. Which would also make his parents even prouder of him. A perfect plan.

He was almost done with his essay, and the little he had left proved to be a bit tricky to write when he couldn’t concentrate. A couple of loud Gryffindors were sitting just behind him, talking a little too loudly to be acceptable in class (but their teacher was far too soft to tell them off). Jongdae had of course considered turning around and telling them to shut their mouths many times, but he didn’t do it because he was a _calm_ and _peaceful_ student, who did not create trouble with his fellow classmates. Therefore, he had to endure their obnoxiousness, at least for the lesson.

Worst of all was the kid named Chanyeol Park. Jongdae hadn’t talked much to him, but he still knew a lot about the boy because of the latter’s obnoxious tendency to run his mouth. He was a round-faced boy, tall for his age, with big eyes and even bigger, pointy ears. Like Jongdae he had Korean parents, but the difference was that Chanyeol Park was also from Korea, and had only moved here recently. Which was very evident when he spoke, the poor boy could barely express himself properly. Still, he had managed to make many friends, and although Jongdae tried hard he couldn’t understand how. The kid was loud, looked kind of stupid, and had a hard time even speaking because of his lack of English vocabulary. Besides, Jongdae had seen him pick his nose more than once.

While Jongdae was thinking of things highly unrelated to his essay, it happened. The incident that ruined everything. Chanyeol Park, infamous for always failing during Charms (at least Jongdae wished he was), pointed his wand forwards, right at Jongdae’s essay parchment, and tried to perform a wand-lighting charm. Except, it was Chanyeol Park, so a simple wand-lighting charm, year one level, turned into something completely else. _Fire_.

Jongdae couldn’t do anything, when he reacted it was too late. His far-too-long essay had turned into black ash, spread out on the desk in front of him. It was horrific.

He tried to collect himself, thinking that his parents had brought him up to be a kind, forgiving individual, but… His essay, which he had spent so much time and effort on, was burnt into ashes. By that sad, _pitiful_ excuse for a wizard. Jongdae could only blame the fact that his eleven-year-old brain hadn’t reached the maturity of an adult yet, as he stood up and steered his steps towards Chanyeol Park’s desk.

“You- You completely _destroyed_ my essay! That I had worked hours on!”

Chanyeol Park looked at him, his large eyes wide, a surprised expression on his stupid face.

“No, no, I, um, it was a mistake! I’m sorry!”

He didn’t even look like he cared much, Jongdae noted. He was just sitting there, not even attempting to do something about this, only to apologise lazily as if that would make things better. _Forgive and move on_ was something Jongdae’s father would tell him, but Jongdae found it hard to do so right now. The mere sight of Chanyeol Park’s dumb face and obnoxious personality made Jongdae get these strong, frustrated feelings, unlike anything else he had felt before.

“ _I’m sowwee!!_ ” Jongdae imitated spitefully. “Do you think that’s enough for what you did? Do you think a simple sorry will bring my essay back?! You absolute _idiot_.”

“I say sorry at least!” Chanyeol Park, the self-righteous _idiot_ , had the guts to _defend_ himself in this situation. “I can’t do more! It… it’s over! Accept it!”

Jongdae took another step closer to the idiot’s desk, about to say something mean but clever in reply, but suddenly both their teacher and Hyuna were there.

“Calm down, boys!” the teacher tried, and Hyuna grabbed Jongdae’s arm.

“Dae, what’s up with you? I understand that you’re upset, but… I’ve never seen you so angry. He said he was sorry.”

Jongdae had no answer. He hadn’t seen himself so angry before, either.

Every time he would see Chanyeol Park after that, he would get the same almost hot, boiling feelings in his stomach - anger, frustration, that he took out on the other in forms of teasing. Chanyeol Park tried to get Jongdae to forgive him several times, probably wanting Jongdae to stop making fun of him, without luck.

Since then, their relationship was built on mutual dislike, a form of rivalry starting. Something that had continued until this point in their sixth year, all because of that one accident and Jongdae’s difficulties with forgiving Chanyeol.

  
  


The next morning Jongdae woke up feeling absolutely exhausted. In spite of that, he felt better than he had done yesterday. Maybe crying out his feelings had been a good thing. It was something he rarely did; showing weakness in front of others was not something he enjoyed. But, somehow, it had helped a bit. Jongdae felt like he could see things more clearly now. How extremely stupid he had been.

His own feelings were most likely to blame for all of this. They were what made him have a hard time forgiving Chanyeol for the incident in their first year, and what continued making him feel like he had to be better than Chanyeol in everything. To beat the person he felt so strongly for, somehow. Turning his feelings into contempt. It was all really silly, now that Jongdae thought about it.

That day, Jongdae decided to emerge from the dorms and join his friends for breakfast. The fact that his fellow Slytherins had greeted him as if nothing was wrong made him think that it probably wasn’t that bad, the rumour situation. He felt brave enough to at least attempt to face the rest of the students. Besides, this was the breakfast just before the train was departing, the train that would take the majority of the pupils home for Christmas, and Jongdae wanted to spend time together with his friends before they left.

The weather was freezing cold that day, as well. The layer of snow was not as thick, though, so it was finally possible to walk freely on the grounds. However, it would probably not last for long as the clouds made it look like another snowstorm was on the way.

Excitement was in the air, Jongdae noticed as he made his way through the common room, which had been thoroughly cleaned up after the party. He supposed a lot of his housemates were looking forward to going home and celebrate with their families (if they celebrated Christmas, that is). Jongdae, on the other hand, was staying at Hogwarts, just like he usually did. His family was not too rich and his parents had to work through most of the holidays, so it would be rather pointless for him to go back.

Both of them were employees at the Ministry, and while they didn’t talk much about their jobs, they made it sound like they were doing something really important. Jongdae doubted it, based on the fact that they were not getting paid a lot they were probably doing something pretty unimportant, like secretarial work or such. His older brother had also started working at the Ministry, and his parents had been so proud that he had followed in their footsteps. He had also been a Prefect during his time at Hogwarts, and had top grades as well.

Jongdae used to be a lot more serious about school when he was younger, just to realise he was pretty useless in comparison, that he could never be as good as his brother. It was something his parents didn’t say out loud, but Jongdae was sure they thought so anyway. Because, what did he do? He had ended up in detention many more times than the average student. His grades in Divination were so-so, despite his mother telling him what an important subject that was. And worst of all he had ended up falling for his idiot of an arch-enemy (he could just imagine his brother calling him a poof if he found out that Jongdae had feelings for another boy). His life was like a bad joke.

When he entered the Christmas-decorated Great Hall together with his friends, Jongdae felt as though every single student were staring at him. He therefore settled for walking just behind Kris’s tall figure, hiding himself until he got to sit down at the breakfast table.

It was not as bad as he had thought, Jongdae realised when he had sat down. Sure, there were a bunch of people whispering and pointing at him, but not too many to make it feel like he was the centre of attention. After glaring at a pair of particularly obnoxious Gryffindor girls (of course _Gryffindors_ would find it entertaining to put their noses in other people’s business), Jongdae decided to ignore all of the attention to the best of his ability. It was after all not _his_ fault.

While he was spreading jam on a piece of toast, Jongdae saw something in the corner of his eye that caught his interest. Chanyeol had just entered the room and was making his way towards the Gryffindor table. Jongdae observed him as he took a seat, chatted with his friends, and put eggs on a plate. Soon enough Chanyeol looked up - _shit he didn’t think of that_ \- and met Jongdae’s gaze. Jongdae felt his face go scarlet as Chanyeol actually _smiled_ at him and mouthed something that only could be the word “hello”. Biting his lip, Jongdae looked down, not acknowledging Chanyeol’s greeting (even though he was sure that Chanyeol had seen him notice it). He felt sweaty all of a sudden. This was so stupid. What was Chanyeol even trying to do?

  
  


Later that morning, Jongdae found himself at the Hogsmeade train station, following his friends there before saying goodbye. The train was departing in twenty minutes, and the platform was very crowded as most students hadn’t boarded the train yet. Because of the weather, parts of the platform were covered with a thin layer of ice, and Jongdae had nearly fallen over three times already.

“I’d like to talk to the person responsible for taking care of this station”, Jongdae muttered as he slipped for a fourth time, and he had fallen straight to the ground if it weren’t for Kris managing to catch him in the right second.

“Thanks”, Jongdae told him and Kris shrugged.

Suddenly, a voice was heard behind him.

“Kim?”

He and Hyuna turned around at the same time.

“What?” they both said, then exchanged tired glances. They were _so_ used to this.

“Um, no, er, you!” the person, who seemed to be a rather small Gryffindor boy, said nervously and pointed to Jongdae.

“There’s someone who wants to talk to you, and, er, he’s under that tree!” the boy pointed to a tree a bit away from the platform. It was not the most ideal hiding spot, Jongdae realised, as he could clearly see who was standing there.

“Well, um, I guess I’ll go talk to him, then”, Jongdae shrugged. The kid smiled relievedly and dashed off, probably thankful to be done with his task.

“I think we’ll board the train to get good seats”, Hyuna said and nodded to Jongdae. “Okay?”

“Ah, yeah, sure. I’ll see you after the holidays, then?” Jongdae asked awkwardly. He was not good at parting.

“We’ll miss you”, Kris said, and sounded even more awkward than Jongdae, thankfully.

“Yeah…”

“Oh, Dae, don’t be too lonely! We’ll write you letters, right Kris? And it’s only for a couple of weeks. You’ll be fine, like always. Just don’t get too whiny in your replies to us!” Hyuna said and hugged him.

“I don’t whine”, said Jongdae in a whiny tone, and Hyuna laughed. Kris patted him on the shoulder once and then they left. Feeling a bit empty, Jongdae stood there for a while. Then, he realised he had to go to that tree.

  
  


Chanyeol had probably thought the tree would be an excellent spot, that standing in the shade of it would hide him from everyone else’s gazes. It had not worked, though, as it was winter and the branches were completely bare, making there less to no shadows beneath it. However, the students on the platform seemed to be too occupied with each other to even glance at the place.

“Ah, hi!” Chanyeol said with a wave when Jongdae arrived. Jongdae just nodded, feeling a bit uneasy.

“So, er, I’m going home now, as you might know…”

Yes, Jongdae knew that. Chanyeol would return to his beloved family, have lots of fun during the holidays, and probably receive plenty of Christmas presents, too. He had overheard Chanyeol speaking about his family before, so he knew.

Chanyeol’s mother worked as a Potions specialist at St Mungo’s Hospital, which was the reason they had moved to the UK in the first place, and his dad had a lovely café in Diagon Alley. He also had an older sister, but Jongdae didn’t know anything about her except that she and Chanyeol were pretty close (unlike Jongdae and his brother). They lived at some nice place in central London, too, close to both of Chanyeol’s parents’ workplaces. How ideal.

Chanyeol cleared his throat. Jongdae had still not said a word.

“I just, I wanted to say before I leave for the holidays that, um… I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so, so, so sorry. I’m sorry.”

It would be a lie to say that Jongdae wasn’t surprised; Chanyeol seemed very sincere. He had even felt the need to repeat his words, that’s how keen he was on apologising.

Right now Chanyeol was looking down, directing his gaze to his hands, rubbing them together in an attempt to keep them warm. His cheeks were a pretty shade of pink, so were his ears, and Jongdae was sure it was not solely because of the frosty weather. Chanyeol then turned his big eyes towards Jongdae, who almost physically felt his stomach jump.

It was too much to look at. Chanyeol’s round, nearly shining eyes, his blushing cheeks, his frost-bitten ears, the pink lips, his dark hair creating a big contrast to his skin and just… his gaze, conveying his emotions like nothing else. He looked like a goddamn painting, and Jongdae felt horrible for thinking so.

“I know you must be feeling absolutely awful, and I suppose just saying sorry isn’t enough for what I did, but… I _am_ really sorry. Please, say something”, Chanyeol almost pleaded, his breath coming out as big puffs of smoke in the frosty air. Then, right at that moment a gust of wind swept Chanyeol’s hair out of his face, and Jongdae could swear the shine in Chanyeol’s eyes wasn’t just his imagination.

“Y-you’re so beautiful.”

Chanyeol’s eyes widened almost comically, his mouth slightly agape, yet he was still looking so-

_Fuck_. Jongdae had said that out loud. Alright, he should calm down, no need to panic.

“Huh?”

It was evident now that the blush on Chanyeol’s cheeks wasn’t only because of the cold. His face was far too red to blame that. Jongdae nervously licked his dry lips, he had to say something. Though, he would rather melt to the ground and freeze, become one with the snow, never have to face another person again. Especially not Chanyeol Park.

“I’m- I mean”, Jongdae was actually shaking, this was _bad_ , “I mean, don’t, um. Just ignore what I said. I, er, I… accept your apology, because…” Jongdae sighed, trying to collect himself. This was the hard part, after all. But he was sure of what to say; something about what had happened in their first year had taught Jongdae to forgive others. Especially when they had done something they couldn’t actually help.

“…You don’t have to apologise. It was not your fault. You couldn’t have done anything to stop Peeves anyway, and… yeah. You’re just making a fool out of yourself, apologising like that.”

That was extremely difficult to say, but it felt kinda worth it. Because, for the first time in their conversation, Chanyeol smiled.

“You mean that?”

Obviously he did not care about Jongdae’s attempt to insult him. And he seemed a bit surprised, too, like he didn’t expect the person who couldn’t forgive him in their first year to be able to change, to finally have the guts to forgive him. To stop being such a coward and face the fact that he himself was also to blame.

Feeling a bit dazzled by the smile, Jongdae nodded, smiling hesitantly back. When Chanyeol spotted that, his grin got even wider.

“Wow. Thank you, Jongdae”, he said, smile still on his lips, his eyes almost twinkling. In spite of the sub-zero temperature, Jongdae positively _melted_.

“Oh, well, I guess I, um, have to leave”, Chanyeol then stuttered awkwardly, ruining Jongdae’s moment a bit, “but this was really nice to hear. I mean, as a last thing before I head home.”

Then, he took a step towards Jongdae, actually _took his hand_ , squeezed it once, and then walked off towards the platform. Chanyeol turned around once on his walk, smiling slightly and waving goodbye to Jongdae, who felt too weak to move.

After a couple of minutes, Jongdae managed to start walking back to the castle. Thanks to his encounter with Chanyeol and his stupid, pretty face (and surprisingly warm hands), it seemed like he had forgotten everything that had happened before their moment together. Therefore he was very unprepared for the frozen state of the platform, and his somewhat shaky legs didn’t make things better as Jongdae slipped and fell on his nose almost instantly after setting foot on the station. This was so humiliating.

He had such a big problem.

  
  


Later, when Jongdae had nearly reached the castle, he started to think. With Chanyeol’s somewhat captivating presence gone he felt like his brain was a bit more clear, and he could therefore let it think of things more critically than before.

Why was Chanyeol so nice to him, all of a sudden? What were his intentions? Was this another trick to get Jongdae to trust him, before doing the most horrible prank in world history? But… Chanyeol had seemed very sincere… and if there was one thing Jongdae had learnt about Chanyeol, it was that he was really bad at covering his emotions. If he was happy, he looked happy. If he was spiteful, he looked spiteful. If he was full of regret, he… supposedly would look like he was full of regret. And he had really done that.

Still, Jongdae could not figure out why Chanyeol felt the need to apologise and get on his good side, if he didn’t have something in mind… Though, it would be unlike Chanyeol to think that way…or maybe, that’s only what Chanyeol would _want_ him to believe…?

He was wrong, his head was not getting any clearer. Still feeling a bit exhausted, Jongdae headed for his common room, planning to go straight to bed. However, when he arrived he saw something that made him change his mind.

Kyungsoo was sitting in one of the armchairs, reading a thick book. If Kyungsoo was still here, that would mean he was staying for the holidays as well! The prospect of not having to spend the two weeks on his own made Jongdae a little excited.

“Hey, Kyungsoo!” he shouted, and the mentioned boy turned his gaze to Jongdae, looking surprised.

“… _Kyungsoo_?” he asked, referring to the fact that Jongdae had called him by his given name. Jongdae was a bit surprised by that too, he had really just said that without thinking. It felt alright to him though, because despite the fact that they didn’t usually talk to each other a lot, Jongdae had known Kyungsoo for several years. Also, Kyungsoo was one of the few people that knew about the accident involving love potion, Chocoballs, and Chanyeol. Calling him his last name felt a bit weird at this point.

“Yeah. It’d be great if you called me Jongdae, too. Or just Dae is alright.”

“Um, okay… Jongdae.”

“So you’re staying for the holidays, too?” Jongdae asked (intentionally ignoring the fact that Kyungsoo wouldn’t call him by a nickname like all his other friends did). Kyungsoo had never done that before. He had, just like most of the other students, gone home during the previous winter breaks, visiting his family.

Jongdae did not know a lot about Kyungsoo’s family except for the fact that he had been adopted by a pair of English Muggles when he was still a baby. It had been a bit of a talk when Kyungsoo first came to Hogwarts, because imagine adopting a small, seemingly normal child, who later turns out to be a wizard. Kyungsoo seemed pretty close with his parents though, so Jongdae was a little bit curious to why he wasn’t spending his holidays with them this year. However, he kept himself from asking about it since he didn’t want to pry.

“Obviously. I suppose you are as well?” Kyungsoo replied and Jongdae nodded.

“I’ve done that every winter. So it’s really nice to have you here. Someone my age. I don’t particularly like hanging out with Gryffindor second years”, he said with a smile. There were only ever a few people to stay, and it was usually a wide mix of people who did not know each other at all. Jongdae had never had the company of someone from his year, and if there was someone at least somewhat close to his age they were never from his house. Most of his holidays Jongdae therefore spent the majority of his time with the letters from his friends.

“I can understand that. It’s nice to have you here, too”, Kyungsoo uttered with a small smile, and Jongdae grinned happily.

“But you _are_ aware of that you have a nosebleed, right?” Kyungsoo then added, eyeing Jongdae’s face.

“Er, no?!” Jongdae immediately lifted his hand to touch the area below his nose, expecting his fingertips to be covered in blood, but no such thing happened. Feeling puzzled, he turned his gaze towards his housemate. Was this Kyungsoo’s type of humour?

“It seems to have dried”, Kyungsoo explained, then stifled a laugh.

“…What?”

“It’s just”, Kyungsoo seemed to try his hardest not to start laughing, “you must have been walking around like that, w-with blood all over your nose area, for a r-really long time for it to actually _dry_ … In front of other people, too…”

Jongdae would have felt rather embarrassed if it weren’t for the fact that he was too fascinated with Kyungsoo’s outburst to care. He had never seen Kyungsoo laugh like this before. Not that they were particularly close, but still…

Kyungsoo glanced at him a second time before bursting out in uncontrollable chuckles, quickly covering his heart-shaped mouth when he saw that Jongdae was watching him.

“Man, you’re weird. Anyway, I slipped on ice and fell on my face before, it must be from that. I’ll go wash it off”, Jongdae said with a shrug, without even attempting to fight the smile off of his face.

  
  


The first days of the break went by unusually fast, and Jongdae found himself enjoying spending time together with Kyungsoo. The younger boy proved to be very easy to talk to once he’d gotten to know him. They even shared their interest for Potions. Since Kyungsoo was such a prodigy when it came to the subject, he could teach Jongdae lots of things he had never read in any of his textbooks, and Jongdae could in return tell Kyungsoo about what was awaiting him in his sixth year.

“He let you make Amortentia?”

Kyungsoo seemed a bit surprised, his wide eyes shining in the light of the fireplace they were sitting in front of. Their common room felt very big, since all the other Slytherin students had gone home. Jongdae quite enjoyed the serenity, despite the fact that he usually liked the castle the most when it was busy, when something new would happen every day.

“Er, yeah, people had been asking him for a really long time, and it is an advanced level potion after all, so…” Jongdae explained, feeling a little uncomfortable with the direction of their conversation, he did not want to think about _that_ lesson.

“Did he really expect you to succeed? I mean, no offence, but it is a very difficult potion to make, and… did you manage?”

Jongdae sighed.

“…No. But I wasn’t very attentive that lesson, and I wasn’t feeling very well, I should’ve just stayed in bed that day… I didn’t try my best, and… well… Chanyeol was the only one able to make it.”

“Park? I didn’t know he was good at potions. I mean, he has to be really great if he managed to actually create an _Amortentia_ ”, Kyungsoo looked very impressed, and slightly shocked. Jongdae bit his lower lip before speaking again.

“Yeah… he’s amazing. I mean, when it comes to potion making he’s definitely the best in our year. And it’s such a pity, because he doesn’t even like the subject… Like, he never bothers to study, he just naturally manages to make perfect potions. I think his mum’s a potion expert, or something like that, so I guess he’s taking after her…” Jongdae sighed again, life was so unfair sometimes.

“Hey, wait, I think I’ve heard of his mother now that I think of it… Park from St Mungo’s Hospital in London? She’s come up with plenty of antidotes to some of the newer potions, such as that one motion sickness potion that was popular a few years ago… She’s pretty remarkable when it comes to potion making, you know”, Kyungsoo told Jongdae, who supposed that if Kyungsoo said it, it must be true.

“Guess she must be proud of Chanyeol, then”, Jongdae said somewhat bitterly, gazing into the fireplace in front of him. Kyungsoo leaned forward in his armchair.

“Hope you don’t mind if I ask, but… Since when do you call Park by his first name? Is it that you’re closer after that… accident happened? And… I’ve heard the rumours, you know. How come people are suddenly spreading _that_ kind of rumours about you?”

Oh, great. Jongdae threw a glance at Kyungsoo, he looked genuinely interested. And Jongdae had thought he was indifferent when it came to these things.

“I, er, I don’t really know”, Jongdae started, and it was true, he did not actually know why he was suddenly calling Chanyeol his given name. He had not even noticed his switch. “He _did_ actually ask me to call him that during, you know, the effects of the love potion, but… I suppose it just grew on me since then. It feels more natural, calling him Chanyeol. I suppose.”

Kyungsoo nodded.

“And about the-”

“Okay, y-yeah, right. Well. There is a reason to those rumours.”

Jongdae did not know how he managed to do it, but he actually told Kyungsoo about everything that had happened the last weeks; everything from when he and Chanyeol were about to kiss and the love potion had stopped working, to what had happened during the potions lesson, Chanyeol confronting him and the accident with Peeves, and finally Chanyeol’s conversation with him before then train left, telling Jongdae he was sorry. Kyungsoo listened attentively, now and then chiming in with a “Really?” or an “Oh, no”.

When Jongdae had finished speaking Kyungsoo was silent for a minute or so. Jongdae could understand, this entire mess was a big thing to take in, he probably needed some time to process everything.

It had been a bit embarrassing to tell Kyungsoo all of this, but he had wanted to know. Besides, there was something about Kyungsoo that made him easy to talk to when it came to things like this, Jongdae didn’t know what, but it was there. He seemed to understand him. And it felt like Jongdae could trust him.

After a while, Kyungsoo spoke up again.

“So… you do like him, then.”

It was not really a question, more like a statement. Facts. Jongdae couldn’t help it, but his cheeks did heat up when Kyungsoo said it like that. Like it was obvious.

“Um… Yeah. I mean, he did have some good proof that I liked him. And… during Potions, the Amortentia… It smelled like him. It was kind of terrifying.”

Jongdae then sighed.

“It’s just… I don’t know how it happened, but I am so… in love with him, and I’ve probably been that for a really long time, I just didn’t realise it until that prank went wrong, and Chanyeol started acting like he had feelings for me, and I actually… kinda liked it…” he trailed off. Then, Jongdae’s stomach flipped when he realised what choice of words he had used to describe his feelings for Chanyeol. _In love_. It was too late to take it back now, though. And… Jongdae supposed it was true, he just hadn’t let himself admit it. He was _in love_ with Chanyeol.

He almost expected Kyungsoo to grimace at him, but the latter just nodded.

“I suppose… those kinds of feelings can be pretty difficult.”

Jongdae put his face in his hands.

“Tell me about it”, he mumbled through his fingers, it being difficult was an understatement.

“You know what I think?”

“What?” Jongdae asked, face still resting in his palms.

“I think Park is a bit of an idiot.”

Jongdae removed his hands to look at Kyungsoo.

“Huh?”

“I guess he meant well, but I think his decision to confront you after getting to know about your feelings was pretty stupid. I mean, what did he expect would happen? Didn’t he even think of the fact that you most likely would panic if you heard that he knew? That you would think it was his revenge, or something? He was just gonna end up hurting your feelings, yet he still did it. I think that’s just dumb.”

Jongdae could agree with what Kyungsoo said, sure. It had been really horrifying, standing there when Chanyeol asked him about his feelings. But at the same time, he couldn’t really blame Chanyeol. He just hadn’t thought things through, it did not seem like he meant any harm.

“I know, but, um… Chanyeol is a bit, er… he doesn’t think before acting, sometimes. That’s one of his weak points. He just does what he feels is right, without even considering the possible outcomes first. I still don’t really know why he decided to ask me about that, but… I don’t think he meant for it to end up like it did. He told me he was sorry, after all…”

“I know. I still think what he did was dumb.”

Jongdae nodded slowly, agreeing.

“Well, yeah. It was. I want to hate him, I know I _should_ hate him, but… I can’t seem to do it.”

Actually, now when he was able to think about it in detail, Jongdae realised that he never had been able to hate Chanyeol. It was just something he said he did, but… it was more like his subconscious created that as a cover for his real feelings.

“Why should you hate him? I mean, I can see why you’d dislike him, but _hating_ him…?”

Kyungsoo’s question surprised Jongdae. He had not thought of it that way.

“Um, he… it’s just… our relationship. We’ve been enemies since our first year… And we’ve continued to try to outdo each other’s pranks and everything… I mean, we are, or were, pretty much rivals, so therefore I’m supposed to hate him, right?” Jongdae knew how stupid that sounded. And it fault that they had that relationship in the first place, all because he couldn’t seem to forgive Chanyeol for some silly accident when they were eleven. There was no need for him to _hate_ Chanyeol, really. Chanyeol had even said himself that he didn’t hate Jongdae (of course, that did not mean that he felt the opposite, sadly).

“Why do you want to know, anyway?” Jongdae asked instead of digging further on that subject. It had actually surprised him to see how genuinely interested Kyungsoo seemed to be. Especially as he’d always seen Kyungsoo as someone who stayed out of other people’s business.

“I’m not _interested_ in this, I was just a bit curious, that’s all”, Kyungsoo said, looking away. Jongdae shrugged.

“You seemed pretty interested, though. And you know I trust you not to tell anyone about any of the things I said?”

“Of course I won’t tell anyone! And, well, I’m… Okay, I find your conflict a tiny bit interesting. I can’t help it, but I kinda like drama”, Kyungsoo admitted, cheeks a little pink. Jongdae smiled slightly, Kyungsoo sometimes was not at all how he had seemed to be. Fascinating.

  
  


The few days before Christmas went by fast, and it was Christmas Eve sooner than Jongdae had thought. For the first time in what felt like forever, Jongdae was actually a bit excited as he went to bed that night. After all, Christmas was usually a rather lonely time of the year for him, the only source of excitement being the one present his family would send him (Jongdae and his friends did not exchange Christmas gifts; they did however give each other small presents during birthdays). This year he was spending the holidays together with Kyungsoo, though. That alone was enough to make him look forward to the next morning.

Jongdae usually had somewhat strange, nonsensical dreams, but never too embarrassing. That night, however, he had a dream involving him and Chanyeol meeting in the Astronomy tower at night, and Chanyeol was for some reason only half-dressed, and a lot more… _affectionate_ than he normally was. Jongdae felt immensely hot, sweaty even, when he woke up on Christmas Day, despite the fact that his dorm was rather cold. For the first time, he had to lie to the dream diary he had in homework for Divination, and write that he hadn’t dreamt anything that night. It would be best that way.

“Jongdae, come on! You have presents waiting for you!” Kyungsoo’s voice came from the common room, and Jongdae realised that it was probably what had woken him up before.

“I’m coming- Wait, you mean there’s more than one present?!” Jongdae uttered, referring to the fact that Kyungsoo had said the word present in plural. That was strange, since his family always sent him one present from all three of them. Not bothering to change from his sweaty pyjamas, Jongdae headed for the common room, feeling excited.

Kyungsoo was already in the process of opening his presents, only turning around when Jongdae entered, to point at a second pile of gifts. It was rather small, sure, but still larger than it usually was. There were two rectangularly shaped presents, a small plastic bag, and two letters, presumably from Hyuna and Kris.

Saving the letters from his friends for last, Jongdae started unwrapping one of the two box-shaped gifts, the one he was sure was from his family (he had recognised the wrapping paper). It contained a new set of a quill and ink, just like he needed, and a large bag of Christmas themed sweets. There was also a letter from his family, and Jongdae put it in the small pile of letters to read later.

Feeling content with his first gift, Jongdae started to unwrap the second. This one had been neatly wrapped with a large, red ribbon on top, and it didn’t exactly look like it was from his parents. Jongdae therefore felt very curious as he ripped open the shiny wrapping paper.

It turned out to be a thick book with the title _A Potion Master’s Secrets: Everything You Need To Know About the Arts of Potion Making_. Skimming through the text on the back of the book, Jongdae immediately thought it seemed promising. Kyungsoo, who had just unwrapped a notebook and a sweater vest, glanced at him from the side and nodded approvingly.

“I have that book at home, it’s probably one of the best books you can find on that subject. Incredibly informative”, he said and Jongdae decided he rather liked this present.

“That’s great! I don’t really know who sent me it, though, it can’t be my family…”

Opening the book on its first page, Jongdae spotted an envelope with his name written on it resting inside the covers. Oh, of course, that had to be from the person who gave him the book. Jongdae quickly opened the envelope, eager to see who the sender was. Upon discovering it, though, he was sure his heart made a leap all the way down to his stomach, only to turn around and head straight for his throat.

“There… There’s a letter here”, he explained weakly to Kyungsoo, who was giving him a curious look.

“And…?”

“… Chanyeol”, Jongdae simply said, which was all he needed to convey his message. Kyungsoo’s eyes noticeably widened.

Taking a deep breath in an attempt to calm his heart down, Jongdae started reading the letter to himself.

_Jongdae!!!_

_Merry Christmas! Hope you’re having a nice holiday at Hogwarts._

_I was very happy about that conversation we had before I left, it made me so relieved that you’re accepting my apology! I still feel pretty bad, though. No matter how you look at it, it was my fault. If I hadn’t confronted you just like that, maybe things wouldn’t have turned out like they did. I feel like I really sabotaged something between us, and I hope you’re not too mad at me… In an attempt to make things better, I tried to convince most of my housemates during the party the evening before the break that the rumours were just something Peeves had come up with to spite us, because he was mad about some prank we’d done. Many of them seemed to believe me! Anyway, when people are coming back after the holidays everyone will have forgotten about all of this, so you don’t have to worry. It’ll be alright (but then again I am a very optimistic person!! Haha)._

_As you’ve hopefully noticed by now, this is my Christmas present for you! In my family we usually give each other money, but I thought that was a bit boring so I asked my mum (who works with potions) if there’s a book she could recommend, and she told me this one was the best! I know you’re interested in potions so I hope you’ll like it. I also sent you some Christmas sponge cake that my dad made. Don’t worry, it’s not poisoned or anything!!! It’s perfectly safe to eat and absolutely delicious, too._

_This letter is already getting a bit long so I guess I should stop writing and shut my big mouth (or whatever it is that you usually say). I’m having a nice time at home, but I am also looking forward to seeing you after the holidays!_

_찬열_

_PS: I forgot to say it the other day, but I really appreciate the compliment! I already knew I’m both handsome and cute, but I had no idea I’m considered beautiful as well!! (:_

“That little, no… big shit”, Jongdae muttered to himself. Why did Chanyeol had to mention Jongdae’s embarrassing slip of the tongue in his letter? But he supposed Chanyeol jokingly replying to it in a letter was a lot better than the other possible outcomes. It at least had to mean Chanyeol was okay with the fact that Jongdae thought he was, um, visually pleasing. When Jongdae thought about it, this was so much better than the risk of Chanyeol finding him disgusting.

Jongdae sat there for a while, reading through the letter a couple of times. He couldn’t get over how cute Chanyeol sounded, with the way he wrote and expressed himself. And he really appreciated Chanyeol’s efforts to stop his housemates from putting their noses in their business. And he liked how keen Chanyeol was to convince him everything would be alright. And his sweet way of telling Jongdae he looked forward to seeing him after the break… And the fact that he had actually given Jongdae a _present_ , even going through the effort to find a good book for him… And…

Wow. Jongdae sure was into him… this was just _great_. He was glad no one could read his thoughts at the moment.

Finally tearing his gaze away from the letter, Jongdae noticed that Kyungsoo was watching him, an impatient look on his face.

“Oh, yeah… You probably want to know more, huh… Well, Chanyeol gave me this book. And a cake, too, and I guess that’s the one”, he pointed to the plastic bag he had yet to open, “and… Eh, just read the letter yourself if you want to.”

Jongdae handed Kyungsoo the letter, and the younger immediately started reading. When he was finished, he wore a somewhat sceptical expression.

“I’m guessing the word in Korean is his name?” he asked, and Jongdae nodded. Of course, having been adopted as a tiny baby by English parents, Kyungsoo probably didn’t know any Korean at all. Jongdae’s own Korean skills weren’t that great either. As his parents had moved to the UK long before he was born, and planned to live there for the rest of their lives, they had decided to bring their children up speaking English instead. They would solely speak Korean when they were by themselves, sometimes. Jongdae therefore only knew pretty basic words and phrases, that he used the few times he met some distant relative. His understanding of the language was alright, if the person talking only said really basic things, and he could also read and write in hangul. But that was about it, really.

Kyungsoo gave Jongdae the letter back, his face still looking kind of sceptical, which Jongdae didn’t notice.

“Isn’t he sweet? I have no idea what his intentions are, but whatever his plan is it worked”, Jongdae sighed blissfully, eyeing the letter again. Kyungsoo shook his head.

“Don’t you think this is really strange? Why would he send you a present, does he expect something in return?”

“Oh, yeah! I have to buy something for him, too!”

“No, I mean, that’s not what I meant!” Kyungsoo said with a sigh. “Look, Jongdae, isn’t this a bit suspicious? I mean, he must have some plan in mind, trying to suck up to you like this… I can understand if he acts a little nice to you after what happened because he feels bad, and I can understand why he apologised to you the other day, but… this feels like he went too far. Something’s not right.”

Jongdae glanced at the letter in his hands, before putting it away. He supposed Kyungsoo had a point. He had just been too dazzled by Chanyeol’s letter and gift to think of it that way.

“You may be right”, Jongdae sighed, “Apologising and toning down the spitefulness is one thing, but buying an expensive book as a Christmas present is completely different. I just… I don’t know why he’s being so overly nice all of a sudden. Okay if he feels bad, but… I mean, if I found out that someone I dislike was fancying me I would just try to avoid that person as much as possible.”

Kyungsoo nodded, and Jongdae continued.

“I suppose he might be planning to make me like and trust him before he does like, the ultimate prank or something. But on the other hand, that would be a very thoroughly planned prank, and that’s so unlike Chanyeol, he’s never put much thought and planning into his pranks. That’s more my thing. And it just feels like actually spending his money on a present is too much dedication to the prank… But… I did spend a lot of money on the love potion when I pranked him a couple of weeks ago, and he’s probably got more money than me, so it’s not impossible…”

“Yeah, I still think you should be wary. He might be up to something, who knows”, Kyungsoo chimed in.

“But the cake… do you think I should taste it? He said he hadn’t done anything to it, but…” Jongdae reached for the bag, opening it slowly as if it contained a bomb. It obviously didn’t, instead there was a plastic box with a big slice of sponge cake inside, prettily decorated with green and red frosting.

“I don’t know”, Kyungsoo said with a shrug, moving closer to get a look of the cake.

“It doesn’t smell weird”, Jongdae added after opening the lid.

“You know what I think? We should ask our Potions professor to check if it’s been spiked with anything. You can tell him the person who sent you it was anonymous, and that you want to be sure it hasn’t been poisoned before eating it.”

“That sounds like a good idea”, Jongdae agreed, closing the box and putting it away. “Hey… what’s that you got there?”

He pointed to a big colourful box Kyungsoo had just opened. It seemed to contain a lot of different, equally colourful items.

“Oh, that… My parents like to travel and it’s their 20th anniversary since they started dating or something, so they went on a trip together to southern Spain to celebrate. That’s why I’m here. Anyway, they sent me lots of souvenirs as a Christmas present.”

“Ah, Spain? Tell you parents _Feliz Navidad_ , then”, Jongdae said, because that was the only phrase he knew in Spanish. “Oh! Are these sweets?!”

He held up a huge bag containing lots of things in various shapes, almost all of them covered in patterned wrappers.

“Yes, I think so. We can share if you want, I won’t be able to eat all that by myself anyway”, Kyungsoo said with a small smile.

“Wow, you mean that? Thank you so much! You can have some of Chanyeol’s cake if it turns out to be alright”, Jongdae said, smiling back at Kyungsoo. Then, he glanced at Kyungsoo’s gifts again.

“Hey, what are these, some kind of instrument?”

“Oh, those are castanets. I think you’re supposed to play them like this…”

  
  


Jongdae and Kyungsoo spent the rest of the morning exploring their presents, it wasn’t until noon that they dressed up and went outside. There had been another snowstorm overnight, and a fresh layer of powder-like snow was now situated on top of the older piles of snow that someone had attempted to shovel away from the grounds.

They had initially been planning to simply take a walk outside, but when Jongdae attacked Kyungsoo from behind by shoving a handful of snow down the back of his robes it quickly escalated into a snowball fight. To Jongdae’s surprise, Kyungsoo turned out to be an excellent fighter, avoiding almost all of Jongdae’s snowballs but at the same time bombarding Jongdae with snowballs of his own. He was also unexpectedly strong, wrestling down Jongdae in a pile of snow and holding him down until Jongdae had to beg for mercy.

Both their hair and clothes were covered in snow when they went back inside, so they switched into warmer and dryer outfits before heading for the Great Hall for lunch and a cup of hot chocolate.

  
  


The Christmas dinner that evening was just as spectacular as always. Because of there being significantly less students, there was only one table in the Great Hall, but it was covered with plates of brussels sprouts, bowls of roast potatoes, boats of gravy and cranberry sauce and of course big, silver platters with turkey. Along the table lay several wizard crackers, and when Jongdae pulled one together with Kyungsoo it exploded with a loud _bang_ , surrounding them with a cloud of blue smoke. Kyungsoo, who got the larger end of the cracker, received a ridiculously fluffy fur hat that he kept on throughout the rest of the evening.

  
  


When they returned to their common room later that evening, Jongdae’s stomach aching from eating too much pudding, he decided to write back to Chanyeol. Eager to use his new quill, Jongdae sat down at a table and started to write.

When he was done, Jongdae realised it sounded a bit harsh and ungrateful, so he started all over again. This time the letter made it seem like he was far too happy with the present, without having any suspicions whatsoever. Therefore, Jongdae re-wrote the letter another time.

After using up too much parchment that just ended up in the garbage anyway, Jongdae was finally done with his letter, reading it through a second time to check for mistakes.

_Hello Chanyeol,_

_Merry Christmas to you as well. I’m having a nice time. I doubt you have as much snow in London as we have over here._

_Thank you very much for the book (and the cake!). I still don’t know what your intentions are, but the gifts are greatly appreciated. I’m not sending you anything in return, but I might give you something when you come back (something else for you to look forward to)._

_I’ll see you after the break,_

_Jongdae_

_PS: I told you to ignore what I said that time._

It sounded a bit too formal, maybe even a little hostile, but Jongdae wanted to make sure Chanyeol knew he was still a bit suspicious about his actions. That he couldn’t just trick Jongdae with a present and a cute letter. Although, Jongdae wished Chanyeol was sincere, that he actually wanted them to be on good terms. To treat each other nicely.

The letter was not at all like the way Jongdae usually wrote his letters to friends. Well, Chanyeol was not exactly a friend. No longer an enemy, either. Jongdae couldn’t even categorise him anymore, and it bothered him a little.

  
  


The following days were nice and relaxing. Jongdae sent away the letter to Chanyeol, and he and Kyungsoo shared Chanyeol’s cake after their professor had declared it was harmless. It turned out to be really delicious, even better than the pudding they’d had on Christmas Day. They also shared Kyungsoo’s Spanish sweets, and the fact that their teeth managed to stay healthy was absolutely incredible, considering how much sugary stuff they both ate during the break.

Jongdae found himself wondering sometimes if Chanyeol had received his letter, for he hadn’t sent him an answer; Jongdae’s owl had returned on its own. Then again, he did not really know what Chanyeol could write as a reply to his letter more than “Okay”.

He felt more and more grateful for the presents as the days went by, the cake had after all been really tasty, and the book also turned out to be as good as Kyungsoo had told him. Jongdae spent a lot of time reading it, and he had already learnt too many new things to be able to count them all. He was going to kick some serious arse in Potions once the second term started.

A subject he didn’t feel as good about was Divination, when he had to lie more than once to his dream assignment because those stupid dreams about Chanyeol _kept appearing_. It was so embarrassing. Jongdae was thankful that he had the entire dorm to himself (as he normally shared it with the other sixth year boys of his house), especially when one dream turned out to be particularly steamy. Any lewd noises he might’ve made were best left unheard by others (most importantly if said noises involved the moaning of Chanyeol’s name like an absolute piece of filth - Jongdae had never felt more ashamed of himself).

  
  


Eventually, the break came to an end and school started. Even though he had enjoyed spending the holidays in a relaxed manner, Jongdae found himself looking forward to the corridors being packed with people rushing to get to their classes, the four tables in the Great Hall full of noisy students, and the atmosphere their common room could only have when there were excited pupils of all ages in every corner, using the room as their getaway from all school-related troubles. He also couldn’t wait to meet his friends again.

However, most of all Jongdae was excited about seeing Chanyeol, interact with him for the first time in about two weeks (not counting the letter exchange). He had actually bought Chanyeol something in return for the Christmas presents when they had visited Hogsmeade during the break. Jongdae had to give Chanyeol it somehow, preferably somewhere they wouldn’t be seen. He had to think something up.

  
  


Jongdae barely talked to Chanyeol at all during the first week of school. It was alright, he supposed, he just needed to collect himself before doing it. Every time he got the chance to talk to him, Jongdae felt far too nervous to take it. He didn’t know what to say, his mind went blank, his hands started sweating. It was ridiculous.

On the other hand, Chanyeol didn’t seek him out to talk either. Jongdae was happy about that, Chanyeol seemed to respect his need of space. Most of the time both of them were in the company of their friends anyway, and if Jongdae was going to talk to Chanyeol he wanted them to be on their own.

Because of those circumstances, the only interaction they had was when Chanyeol would smile slightly at Jongdae when their eyes met, and when Jongdae had gone to the train station to pick up his friends and Chanyeol had passed him by, whispering a “hi, Jongdae” into his ear (which managed to send shivers down Jongdae’s spine).

Their classes of the first week were alright, Jongdae already felt like he was doing better than ever at Potions. Chanyeol left him alone during the lessons they had together, which made Jongdae able to focus more. Also, it seemed like Chanyeol had been right in his letter, about everyone forgetting about the rumours after the holidays, as people had stopped pointing and whispering about him.

Still, when the weekend came Jongdae felt a bit exhausted. He supposed he had really grown accustomed to the calm and relaxing days of the break.

  
  


That Saturday, the first Quidditch game of the year (but second to last game of the season) was going to be held, and it was a really important match. The teams were Gryffindor and Ravenclaw, and if Gryffindor won the game they would secure the first place of the Cup. If they didn’t, however, things were pretty open. If they lost and Slytherin won the last game against Hufflepuff, the first place would go to Slytherin. They had won last year, and the Slytherins wanted to keep the Cup this year as well.

Therefore Kris, and many more of Jongdae’s housemates were both excited and anxious about this game. Jongdae was not really into Quidditch, but he could understand how they felt. Frustrated over the fact that the fate of the Quidditch Cup was out of their control. Everything was after all depending on if Gryffindor won or lost the match.

Almost all of Jongdae’s friends and housemates were on their way to watch the game, and for some reason Jongdae decided to tag along for once. It was an unusual decision, especially since Kyungsoo was staying and Jongdae in all honesty would much rather keep him company than go watch some people on broomsticks chasing balls around, but here he was. He supposed it might have something to do with the fact that Chanyeol played on the Gryffindor team.

Because of that, Jongdae soon found himself standing in the middle of a large bunch of loud Slytherins, who didn’t exactly root for Ravenclaw, more rooting for the loss of Gryffindor. The weather was still freezing cold; it had not snowed for the whole week but the temperature was below zero, making watching Quidditch outside a very cold experience.

At first Jongdae really regretted it, what was he even doing there, he didn’t care for Quidditch, but then the players marched out on the field, looking almost impressive; the Ravenclaws in blue and bronze coloured robes, and the Gryffindors in red and gold. Jongdae could clearly spot Chanyeol’s tall figure amongst the Gryffindor players, and somehow that made him calm down a little. Maybe this match was worth watching, after all.

It _was_ rather exciting, Jongdae had to admit. Sure, sometimes it was a little hard to keep up with who was who and what was happening when all he could see were red and blue shapes zooming around in the air, but the commentator was a great help. It was also relatively easy to spot Chanyeol, Jongdae could recognise his tall, lean body and thick, dark hair even when he was far away. Chanyeol was not really their best player, he was probably the worst out of Gryffindor’s three Chasers; but he was still alright, after all he had made the team, and it was evident how much he enjoyed playing Quidditch.

Chanyeol scored three times during the match, and even though Jongdae was surrounded by his housemates moaning in dissatisfaction, he couldn’t help but feel warm on the inside when he saw Chanyeol smiling happily and throwing his hands in the air.

The Ravenclaw team fought bravely, but it was made clear that they were no match for the confident Gryffindor players. Their Seeker was especially great, catching the Snitch before the Ravenclaw Seeker had even spotted it. At first Jongdae felt a bit disappointed that they had won, after all he was a Slytherin and had enough house pride to want to win the Quidditch Cup, even though he wasn’t too into the sport.

That changed, however, when Chanyeol pretty much exploded with happiness on the field, zooming by the audience with a huge, dazzling smile on his face. Before heading down to the ground to join his celebrating teammates, Chanyeol slowed down in front of where Jongdae was sitting, and gave him a grin and a small wave. Jongdae automatically smiled back, it was hard not to do so when Chanyeol’s smile was so contagious. His housemates groaned irritatedly at the action, though, thinking it was something Chanyeol did to provoke them. Jongdae didn’t mind that, because in spite of the chilly weather there was a warmness spreading through his entire body as though he had just downed a large cup of hot tea.

  
  


The atmosphere in the Slytherin common room after the game was not too cosy. Most of the students were still upset about the outcome of the game, and the room was unusually quiet; the majority of the noises were bitter sighs uttered by several people.

When the evening came, both Hyuna and Kris went to their dorms early, still in pretty bad moods. Jongdae did not feel very tired, so he didn’t want to go to bed already, but on the other hand the sulky atmosphere in the common room was almost suffocating. He couldn’t go to the library, since it was closed at this hour, and wandering the grounds was completely out of the question. It was really bothersome, to be trapped in the common room with nothing fun to do at all. Additionally, Jongdae’s brain decided to annoy him some more by always drifting off to thoughts about Chanyeol, even when Jongdae tried to think of something else. It was hopeless. Damn Chanyeol.

Oh. Wait. Jongdae actually knew what to do. Actually, there was nothing else he wanted to do more at that moment. He fetched a bag at his dorm, then spurted through the common room, heading for the exit. Kyungsoo, who was sitting in an armchair and reading, lifted his gaze to give him a curious look.

“I’m just going to give Chanyeol his gift”, Jongdae explained silently, and Kyungsoo looked somewhat surprised.

“Isn’t he in his common room celebrating, though? How will you get in there?”

“It’ll work out”, Jongdae stated, sure of himself. He had just started feeling brave enough to finally do this, so he was not going to back out.

“Oh, okay… Good luck, then”, Kyungsoo said, shrugging, then returning his gaze to his book.

“Thanks”, Jongdae whispered back, before leaving the common room.

  
  


Well outside, Jongdae realised he had to make his way to the Gryffindor common room silently, as they were not supposed to be walking the corridors at this hour. It was very dark, which wasn’t a surprise since he was still in the dungeons, so Jongdae took out his wand.

“ _Lumos_.”

With his wand lighting the path for him, Jongdae started his journey all the way to the seventh floor, where the entrance to the Gryffindor Tower was situated.

  
  


The corridors on the higher floors were not as dark, Jongdae noticed, as they were lined with still aflame torches. He could therefore put away his wand.

In spite of the corridor being illuminated, the Fat Lady in the portrait at the entrance of the Gryffindor common room was asleep. It did not matter much to him, Jongdae realised, since he didn’t know the password anyway. And even if he did know it, Jongdae wouldn’t use it, since he did not feel like entering the common room alone and have every single Gryffindor staring at him like he had committed a serious crime or something.

So, Jongdae settled for sitting outside, waiting patiently. He could admit that he hadn’t thought this through, he had just received some Chanyeol-esque surge of impulsiveness, feeling braver than ever before. But someone was bound to exit the common room sometime and find him there.

  
  


After sitting there for about half an hour, Jongdae started feeling tired, almost sleepy. Yet, he was not returning to his own common room; he was not going to give up after only thirty minutes. Though, the thought of his own, cosy bed was rather appealing… and the corridor was pretty cold, too…

  
  


Jongdae didn’t know how long it had been when something finally happened. He had actually fallen asleep for a short while, but only in a state of light sleep; it was therefore easy for him to wake up when the portrait opened itself, revealing a boy and a girl who looked like fifth years, both of them rosy-cheeked and giggly. Jongdae heard the sound of music being played and people talking and laughing loudly emerging from the common room, meaning that the Gryffindors were still up celebrating their Quidditch Cup win.

The couple were speaking very vividly with each other, but stopped abruptly when they noticed Jongdae waiting outside.

“Oh. Um, are you a Prefect or something? Then, we’re sorry, we were just going to have a bit of fresh air”, the girl said, and the boy nodded multiple times.

“No, it’s nothing like that”, Jongdae replied with a shrug, “I’m not a Prefect. I was just… er, is Chanyeol Park in there? Could you get him for me?”

The two Gryffindors glanced at each other and nodded, vanishing into the common room again.

Jongdae spent the seconds he had by himself with trying to put his hair in place, then fiddling nervously with the sleeves of his cloak. It was now he had his chance, it was now it happened. Attempting to swallow down the big lump that had appeared in his throat, Jongdae stood there for a small while, feeling his previous feelings of courage being washed away like a bottle dropped in the sea.

Finally, Chanyeol emerged from the common room, also looking somewhat rosy-cheeked, his fluffy hair a bit messy. He was wearing a red and gold sweater with the Gryffindor emblem, and a golden party hat was stuck on his head with the help of a string placed under his chin. He still looked absolutely dazzling, though, to Jongdae’s chagrin; it would make this so much harder.

“Jongdae!” he exclaimed happily when he had left the portrait hole, “I couldn’t help but hope it was you.”

So, Chanyeol had _hoped_ Jongdae was the one waiting for him… Oh, this was just great, Jongdae was feeling like melting to the ground even before he had the chance to say something.

“Um, yeah. I… I wanted to, um.”

Jongdae stopped, took a deep breath, and continued.

“Congratulations on winning. The Quidditch Cup, I mean. You were… great.”

Chanyeol smiled so wide Jongdae almost felt the urge to count his teeth, just to prove how ridiculously wide his smile was.

“Thank you! I saw you watching the game, it really surprised me, you’re not too into Quidditch, right? Why did you…?”

“Oh, um, I just felt like watching for once. It’s no big deal. Hey, um… I know I thanked you in the letter, but still, thank you again for the book and all… It’s really good. I like it a lot.” Jongdae looked down at the ground, at his feet, at Chanyeol’s feet, downwards, just so he wouldn’t look Chanyeol in the eyes. It was kind of difficult, being honest like this.

“That’s so nice! My mum said it was the best book she knew on Potions, so…”

“Yeah. Anyway, I said I had a gift for you, and… here”, Jongdae handed Chanyeol the bag he had brought, trying to ignore the feeling he got when their fingers touched, the sudden imagination of those fingers touching him anywhere and everywhere else.

“Thank you! Ah, what’s this? _Ooh!!_ ”

Jongdae couldn’t keep himself from smiling, Chanyeol’s vivid way of speaking and excited reaction reminded him of a small child receiving their favourite toy for Christmas. Utterly adorable.

“Yes, they’re Chocoballs”, Jongdae said, he had bought a big box of ten Chocoballs, “and they’re not spiked with anything, I promise. I haven’t even opened the box they came in.”

“I believe you”, Chanyeol said with a big grin, looking up from the bag and into Jongdae’s eyes. Jongdae suddenly felt out of breath. He was _hopeless_.

Hopelessly in love. How embarrassing.

Jongdae tried to direct his gaze somewhere else, but instead of focusing on the wall or something equally harmless it decided to land on Chanyeol’s lips. Those pink, perfectly round and a bit plumpish lips. Jongdae could physically feel his cheeks go red with how hot they suddenly started to feel, and it became even worse when Chanyeol very briefly opened his mouth slightly to lick his lower lip; Jongdae was sure his entire face had changed colour at this point. It was inevitable, with all the sudden images that appeared in his head, all having to do with Chanyeol’s lips in one way or another. He felt so humiliated, was this something Chanyeol had planned, was it his way of making fun of Jongdae’s feelings?

Because, why _was_ he acting so nice with Jongdae? What did he even have to gain from it, except Jongdae falling even deeper for him? (and Jongdae was sure that was something Chanyeol wouldn’t want, so the whole thing felt really strange).

But what could he really do about it? Nothing came to mind. Jongdae supposed he could play along, enjoy Chanyeol’s kindness while it lasted. At least to see where this was going.

“So…” Chanyeol then started, after there only having been silence between them for a time long enough to make it awkward.

“Yeah.”

Jongdae had no idea what he just agreed with, but he supposed he had to at least say _something_.

“Y'know, Jongdae… I was wondering…” Chanyeol started, only to trail off again. Jongdae eyed him.

“What?”

“Um, eh. Nothing important.”

Silence ensued again, and Jongdae sighed.

“What is it, Chanyeol?”

“Well, I’m…” Chanyeol attempted again, then stopped only to look at Jongdae like he had just started growing a second nose on his face. “… You called me _Chanyeol_?!”

“Oh. Er, yes, I did”, Jongdae replied sheepishly. He hadn’t even noticed it. “Are you okay with it? Should I not?”

“No, no, keep doing it! It’s just… so different. I kinda like it. I don’t think I’ve ever heard you referring to me as my first name only.”

Chanyeol smiled at him and Jongdae felt his chest fill with some kind of emotion he could not describe. It made him even more nervous.

“Well, I actually did it during the, er, whole love potion incident… thing. Because you asked me to and I didn’t want to make you sad. But it feels more natural now.”

“Ah, you did? I can’t believe I missed that.”

“Yeah…” Jongdae said quietly, after all it was his fault Chanyeol couldn’t remember a thing from that day. Eager to switch subjects, Jongdae continued, “A-anyway, what did you want to ask me before?”

“Ah, um, well…”

Chanyeol looked down, and Jongdae could swear his cheeks looked redder than before in the light of the burning torches.

“I- I was thinking… Is it true, you know, that you… _like_ me?”

Oh. Maybe Jongdae shouldn’t have asked. He did not want things to repeat themselves, after all. It had been humiliating when Chanyeol had asked him the first time, so why did he have to do it again? Didn’t he know by now?

Jongdae seriously considered leaving; if this was going to lead to Chanyeol making fun of him there was no point in staying. But then Chanyeol took his right hand in his, moving his thumb in soothing circles over Jongdae’s skin, and… Jongdae stayed.

“I’m… fine. With it. You can tell me”, Chanyeol said, and had that sincere look on his face again, and it almost felt too good to be true. Why wasn’t Chanyeol disgusted with him, why didn’t he try to avoid him, why was he actually attempting to talk this out with Jongdae? The questions circulated in Jongdae’s head in the way Chanyeol’s thumb was still circulating calmingly on the back of Jongdae’s hand, making him feel somewhat conflicted, but… Perhaps his only choice was to properly answer the question. To finally confess to Chanyeol, once and for all.

“…Yes. Actually, I’m pretty sure _like_ is too weak of a word. I’ve kinda realised that, um… the feelings I have for you aren’t really hate, but… the opposite. And there’s no point in denying it now, you already figured it out weeks ago; I- I’m in lo-”

Okay… maybe he was not brave enough to say it out loud. Jongdae took a deep breath, lifted his gaze slowly to look at Chanyeol’s face, to catch his reaction, and continued, “You know what I mean.”

He was sure Chanyeol did.

Jongdae’s heart was hammering in his chest, more intense than he had ever felt it do before, but he had no time to half-assedly try to collect himself. This was it, he had done what he could, and now Chanyeol had to speak, say something, react.

Chanyeol’s cheeks were cutely enough almost the same shade as his sweater, and his eyes were big, completely focusing on Jongdae. Then, Chanyeol smiled. He actually _smiled_ , and Jongdae had no idea if it was a good or a bad reaction. Actually, he was almost shaking, anxiously awaiting what Chanyeol would do next, this was nerve-racking, but he could do nothing, just wait-

Chanyeol then squeezed Jongdae’s hand reassuringly, and _finally_ started speaking.

“That’s… that’s good then, because, I… I feel the same.”

Jongdae was ninety-nine percent sure his heart actually _stopped_.

For a couple of seconds Jongdae did nothing; he didn’t breathe, his shaking stopped, his tense hand fell limp in Chanyeol’s still firm grip, and he… his gaze was directed at Chanyeol’s face, sure, but he didn’t _look_ at him.

It was hard to believe, Jongdae thought when he had finally managed to recover, how could… why would Chanyeol all of a sudden… feel _that way_ about him? Was this some kind of joke?

“A-ah, about _you_ , I mean, I feel the same but about you!” Chanyeol exclaimed, misinterpreting Jongdae’s silence. He seemed utterly sincere, though, and Jongdae knew Chanyeol was bad at hiding his emotions… He had obviously been nervous about telling Jongdae this, he still seemed nervous, even. And… it would be so unlike Chanyeol to go this far for some sucky joke. But maybe Jongdae’s brain was just telling him what he wanted to hear…?

Chanyeol must have realised why Jongdae was still unable to speak, because he took Jongdae’s other hand too, and covered both of Jongdae’s smaller hands with his big ones.

“Jongdae, I’m telling the truth. I wouldn’t admit something like this for a prank. It would be too insensitive.”

Chanyeol looked almost pleading, so Jongdae supposed he had to speak up.

“But… the love potion worked on you… when I did the prank…” he managed to verbalise, still feeling that something was wrong despite Chanyeol’s apparent sincerity.

“I’m… er, back then I hadn’t really started seeing you in that way, I think. I just realised it recently, when I got to know about your feelings… I think I’ve always been a little fond of you, actually, but… It’s only now that I’ve started liking you in, well, the same way you like me.”

Jongdae felt this fluttering feeling in his entire body, which he tried to ignore. Still, Chanyeol said he had always been fond of him…! And it was rather brave, admitting all that.

However, something still felt off.

“You’re not… drunk or anything, are you?”

Chanyeol’s eyes widened remarkably.

“What, _no!_ Where would I even get booze from?!”

_Poor, innocent Chanyeol_ , Jongdae thought before he could stop himself. Maybe, just maybe… he was speaking the truth. Holy…

All of a sudden, Jongdae felt a huge surge of energy flowing through his body. In spite of being sleepy before, Jongdae now felt like he could run around the castle, without stopping, just running and running and…

“You- You like me. You like me”, was all Jongdae could say, and Chanyeol released a small laugh.

“Yeah, took you long enough to get”, he said, grinning. Jongdae returned the smile, feeling exceptional. But then-

“How? I mean how come you like me, of all people?”

It still felt a little too good to be true.

“Why wouldn’t I?” Chanyeol asked, looking a bit puzzled. Jongdae sighed.

“Well, there are lots of reasons-”

“Okay, no, shh. This is a bit weird to say, especially since we were, like, rivals before, but… Jongdae, you are a-amazing.”

Jongdae’s eyes widened and his heart probably did a loop in his chest; something about Chanyeol praising him with that deep voice of his… was almost too much. It seemed like Chanyeol was a bit affected by admitting that too, for his face was flushed and he looked away, not meeting Jongdae’s gaze.

“You think?”

“Yes. To be completely honest, I find it a bit unreal that you like me, too. You’re amazing”, Chanyeol said again, this time with more confidence, brave enough to look at Jongdae again. Jongdae’s face felt as though it were on _fire_.

“And… in that last conversation we had… Um, you told me to forget it, but I couldn’t… W-well, I want to say that _you’re_ really beautiful. Too.”

This was too much; Jongdae nearly got the urge to cry. Forget that his face _felt like_ it was on fire, Jongdae was sure it was actually burning by now, with dangerously hot flames, turning his face into ashes. Not knowing what to do, or what to say, Jongdae released his hands from Chanyeol’s grip, lifting them to cover his precious face.

“Really?” he asked at last, voice coming out muffled because of his hands being in the way. Jongdae could not see Chanyeol’s reaction, but he could hear the happiness in his voice as he answered,

“Really. And stop covering your face. I want to see it.”

Chanyeol gently grabbed Jongdae’s wrists, and slowly brought his hands down; Jongdae did not fight back. Though he did feel a bit embarrassed when Chanyeol could look at him properly again, he knew his face was redder than the Christmas decorations the staff had yet to remove from the castle.

“Ah, you’re so… cute.”

Chanyeol had that fond expression on his face again, and looked absolutely adorable, so Jongdae could not really understand why Chanyeol was calling _him_ cute. He did feel flattered, though. It reminded him of when Chanyeol had been affected by love potion and insisted on calling him cute, although, this felt like a very different situation. Chanyeol did not at all look like he was under the influence of love potion of any sort, his face and eyes looked perfectly normal and he didn’t have that obsessive thing going on; he was just so… genuine.

Jongdae smiled at him, and Chanyeol happily grinned back.

“You really like me, then…” Jongdae stated, feeling somewhat cheesy but he couldn’t help it. Besides, he did not really care, this was too important for him to pay any attention to something like that.

“Yeah… Actually, I want to try something”, Chanyeol said, and took a step closer to Jongdae, who immediately felt a stir of excitement. What was he…?

Chanyeol then leaned forwards, keeping his gaze on Jongdae’s face. Jongdae felt a bit nervous, so he licked his lips, having no idea what to do with himself at the moment. Did Chanyeol expect him to lean closer to him, too? Stand on his toes to reach him better? Because he was about to kiss him, right?

Trying to calm his speedy heartbeat down, Jongdae breathed in slowly, collecting himself. By now, Chanyeol was really near, and Jongdae needed to be prepared. He had been in this situation before, after all, he should know what to do.

Chanyeol’s face came even closer, and Jongdae realised he was not ready. He stood there, frozen, as Chanyeol leaned into him and…

He didn’t kiss Jongdae. Instead, he moved his face closer to a place on Jongdae’s head, sniffing his hair.

… _What_.

“… _What_?” Jongdae voiced out loud.

“Oh, it’s… it’s the same!” Chanyeol exclaimed, making Jongdae even more confused, then leaned back again. His eyes were bright and his expression joyful.

“What is-”

“Your scent! It’s the same as the one I could smell from the Amortentia! It’s the third thing, the scent I couldn’t recognise, but… Everything makes sense! It was _you_!”

“Oh, that’s nice…” was all Jongdae could say. Of course, he meant it, it was really thrilling to hear that Chanyeol had smelled _his_ scent from the Amortentia, but… He couldn’t keep himself from feeling a bit disappointed that he hadn’t been kissed.

Actually, there was nothing he wanted more than that right now. Kissing Chanyeol. It was just… Even though Chanyeol had that silly smile on his face at the moment (which Jongdae couldn’t help but replicate) he was still so frustratingly _attractive_ , and all Jongdae wanted to do was to kiss his stupid face, busy his lips with something else than just smiling dumbly. And Chanyeol was so close, too, he didn’t even need to make a big effort to cover those lips with his own, the opportunity was there and damn, Jongdae was going to seize it. After all, Chanyeol never received his reward that life-changing day a couple of weeks ago.

Jongdae therefore moved even closer to Chanyeol, putting his hands on the latter’s shoulders to keep his balance while tiptoeing, all to be on level with Chanyeol’s face (particularly his mouth). He did this very quickly, so Chanyeol barely had the time to react before Jongdae tilted his head slightly, leaning in for the taller’s lips.

Chanyeol seemed to realise what was happening just as their lips were about to meet, his eyes widening and mouth opening slightly in a small gasp. This caused their teeth to clack together awkwardly, partly because Jongdae had applied a lot of force to his ascent. In spite of that, Jongdae’s heart was pounding with excitement, he could finally feel the softness of Chanyeol’s pretty lips against his own, and it was absolutely _amazing_.

To be entirely honest he wasn’t too sure of how he was to do this, but that did not seem to matter much since their lips slid smoothly over each other on their own. Chanyeol relaxed quickly, releasing a small sigh through his nose and closing his eyes in content. This action was enough to make Jongdae feel a tickling sensation in his entire body, but it became even better when Chanyeol used a very physical method of beckoning Jongdae to come even closer, wrapping his arms around Jongdae’s back and pulling them chest to chest; Jongdae was sure he could actually feel Chanyeol’s heartbeat against his own. It made him immensely happy; if he had doubted Chanyeol’s feelings for him before, those doubts were gone by now. There was no way Chanyeol would go this far and kiss him, and _enjoy_ it too, just for a shitty prank.

As this was Jongdae’s first time kissing for real, Chanyeol was the more experienced kisser because of the fact that he had dated before (when Jongdae thought about it, he realised how inexplicably grumpy he had been around that time; now he knew why). Therefore Jongdae trusted him to know what he was doing, and just followed along when Chanyeol moved his mouth upwards a bit, trapping Jongdae’s upper lip between his own. There was a wet sound as he did so, which Jongdae probably would have thought was gross if he was in any other situation, but now it just made him even more excited.

Then, when Chanyeol started sucking lightly on his upper lip Jongdae felt as though someone had used a Jelly-Legs Jinx on him, as his legs went all wobbly and unsteady. In need for something to keep his balance better, and also in desperation for even more bodily contact, Jongdae threw his arms around Chanyeol’s shoulders, pressing himself even closer.

Chanyeol responded with a low noise from the back of his throat, tightening his grip around Jongdae’s waist and back. Feeling more adventurous because of that, wanting to see how else he could make Chanyeol react, Jongdae opened his mouth slightly to let his tongue slide over Chanyeol’s lower lip. It was very brief, but Chanyeol’s response was immediate by parting his lips as well, and _good lord_ , now Jongdae was hanging onto him for dear life; Chanyeol released a sigh of hot air into Jongdae’s own mouth. His breath was rather sweet, Jongdae suspected there might’ve been treats around during the celebrations in the Gryffindor house, and Jongdae couldn’t keep himself from responding to Chanyeol with a moan.

By now his entire body was _burning_ , and Jongdae knew he would just make it worse by continuing, yet he could not stop. There was just something thoroughly intoxicating about the fiery feeling taking over him, making him do things he would never do otherwise. Such as moaning yet again with pleasure as Chanyeol slid his tongue into his mouth, oh boy, this was something he had just dreamt of before, actually happening right now. Jongdae tried to do the same, getting a taste of Chanyeol’s mouth and saliva, feeling rather nasty but oh, how he enjoyed it. Chanyeol’s tongue was wet and warm, and Jongdae traced it slowly with his own, earning him a groan from Chanyeol.

Jongdae then lifted one of his hands to the back of Chanyeol’s neck, slowly moving it upwards to run his fingers through Chanyeol’s hair; it was as soft as it looked. Opening his eyes slightly, Jongdae caught a glance of Chanyeol furrowing his brows as he released yet another hot, heavy sigh into Jongdae’s mouth. Jongdae almost shivered with excitement; he liked to think that Chanyeol had wanted this as much as he did, and that he felt the same burning feeling as Jongdae felt.

He couldn’t help it, his heartbeat was increasing even more and his palms were sweaty as he held himself as close to Chanyeol as possible, still exploring the other’s mouth eagerly. Chanyeol’s tongue was hot against his, and his hands felt just as hot against Jongdae’s back. It was embarrassing, but with the way he had started to breathe more heavily than before Jongdae was sure his body was going to react inappropriately if this continued, yet he did not want this to end-

~~Luckily~~ ~~Sadly~~ It did not go that far as they were interrupted by a loud gasp.

The entrance to the Gryffindor common room had opened slightly, revealing several of Chanyeol’s friends. Jongdae and Chanyeol immediately separated with an embarrassing _smack_ , perhaps a bit too fast as Jongdae felt a long string of saliva (it might have been his own, it might have been Chanyeol’s, or it could even be from both of them) stick to his chin. He self-consciously wiped it off with the back of his hand, spotting Chanyeol doing something similar with a sweater-clad arm.

“What is- What are you-” stuttered one of Chanyeol’s friends, seemingly shocked (and possibly a bit scarred for life). Another one just pointed at them speechlessly, letting her facial expression do the talking. The only one who seemed to not be as taken aback was Amber, who just made a grimace.

“Ew, guys. Gross”, she said emphatically.

Jongdae didn’t know it was physically possible for a face to feel this hot. He therefore buried his entire face in Chanyeol’s sweater (bless his tall height), hiding it from everyone’s view, he was sure the colour of his face was matching the sweater by now.

Chanyeol, who seemed awfully flustered, decided to do the talking since Jongdae had made it obvious he was not up for it. Besides, they were _his_ friends after all.

“A-ah, er, we were just, um”, Chanyeol managed to tell them, and Jongdae noted with a small feeling of delight that his voice was a little hoarse.

“You were _just_ …? How is- How come you two are-” the pointing girl exclaimed, not even finishing her sentences.

“I told you so. A Galleon, please”, Amber said, and another of Chanyeol’s friends answered.

“Really, how did you guess…? I thought you were joking when you said you thought they’d be making out!”

“Yeah, it sounded too ridiculous to be true!”

Jongdae started to grow very irritated with Chanyeol’s obnoxious friends. He gripped Chanyeol’s sweater tightly, wanting the two of them to be by themselves again.

“Uh, why are you guys even here?” Chanyeol finally asked, at last working out a complete, understandable sentence.

“We were just going to check up on you in case something had happened. You’ve been out here for a while, after all.”

“Yeah, but I’m alright, so, um”, Chanyeol said without finishing, instead clearing his throat. Jongdae realised nothing was going to get done at this rate, so he irritatedly grumbled through the knitted fabric of Chanyeol’s sweater,

“ _Can you leave us alone?_ ”

“Woah, okay, sorry”, Amber said, sounding a bit offended. Though, she did seem to drag her friends back into the common room, at last leaving Jongdae and Chanyeol on their own.

“They’re… They’re gone now”, Chanyeol said softly after a couple of seconds, and Jongdae removed his face from Chanyeol’s chest, feeling relieved.

“Your friends are annoying”, he stated, looking down. Chanyeol didn’t even try to defend them, he just made a sound of agreement. They then stood opposite each other for a small while. It was all a bit awkward, the sudden appearance of Chanyeol’s friends had kind of ruined the mood from before.

Chanyeol cleared his throat.

“So…”

Jongdae cleared his throat as well; it felt like something was blocking it. A feeling of nervousness, maybe.

“Hm…”

“We, um, got a bit eager there, huh?” Chanyeol noted with a small laugh and Jongdae nodded.

“I kinda liked it, though.”

“Oh, don’t misunderstand, I really liked it too! It was… nice”, Chanyeol said with a bashful smile, and Jongdae could not understand how someone could look so cute yet so frustratingly handsome at the same time. “Let’s do it again sometime.”

“Sounds like a plan”, Jongdae replied, grinning back at Chanyeol.

“Tomorrow, maybe? It’s a Sunday, so… um, we could go do something together, er, if you want to, that is…” Chanyeol awkwardly stammered, and Jongdae smiled even bigger than before.

“Of course I want to”, he almost snickered, “let’s meet up after breakfast. And promise not to fling me up any trees”, he then added jokingly. Chanyeol’s huge eyes widened, but then he caught on.

“Only if you promise not to give me any treats spiked with love potion! They wouldn’t even work, so it would just be a waste of effort…”

The thought of his stupid love potion prank made Jongdae somewhat embarrassed, but thinking back on it, he did not regret it. It was after all what lead to him discovering his feelings about Chanyeol, and Chanyeol finding out about said feelings, _and_ then figuring out his own feelings, too. If it hadn’t happened, they would not be where they were right at the moment. In spite of experiencing a tiny sting of guilt, Jongdae felt happier than ever.

“Anyway… I should probably go back… It’s late and all. And my friends have probably told everyone in there what they, um, saw. Just so you know. Hope it’s alright.”

“… Yeah. I’m not going to feel ashamed for liking you anymore. They can tell whoever they want, I don’t care”, Jongdae said, but to be completely honest it was hard not to feel a little humiliated… He supposed it was difficult to change so quickly, but he _was_ going to. He just needed some time, that was all.

“Ah, super”, Chanyeol said with a grin, cheeks turning pink as he leaned forward a little. “So, um…”

It took Jongdae a second or two to figure out that Chanyeol expected them to kiss goodnight. Oh.

Jongdae therefore leaned a bit closer as well, only to raise a hand and lightly press his index finger to Chanyeol’s lips.

“Now, you already received your reward”, he said, smiling smugly at Chanyeol’s puzzled expression, “but… I guess I can give you a bonus for giving you the reward so late.”

With that he removed his digit from Chanyeol’s lips, and before Chanyeol had the time to say anything Jongdae tiptoed to place a quick kiss to said lips, feeling that warm, tickling sensation in his entire body again.

“It’s not really my fault, though… You just wouldn’t accept it until now. Goodnight, Chanyeol. See you tomorrow.”

Jongdae turned around, trying to keep himself from laughing out loud at Chanyeol’s adorably confused face.

“Wait, wha-” Chanyeol started, “What reward? What for?”

Jongdae chose to ignore the questions, instead almost skipping down the stairs. He was acting a bit silly, he knew that, but he could not bring himself to care. After all, he felt more euphoric than he had ever done before. And it was all because of _Chanyeol_. If someone had told him a month or so ago that he would feel this way about his arch-enemy, Jongdae would’ve just laughed, not believing it for a second. But here he was. Life was strange, huh.

  
  


(When Jongdae woke up the next day, he was welcomed with a somewhat disoriented feeling. The entire time during breakfast, his brain was filled with conflicting thoughts. He was worried that it was all a dream; what had happened yesterday felt too good to be true. But when he saw Chanyeol waiting for him outside the Great Hall, looking as nervous as Jongdae felt on the inside, all of his worries were gone. Instead, Jongdae got an immense feeling of bliss as he started walking alongside Chanyeol, their fingers slowly intertwining.

No love potion in the world could give him that.)

 

THE END

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EUPHOOOORIAAA~ FOREVER ‘TIL THE END OF TIME ♪
> 
> okay, actually… i feel rather empty finishing this. i’ve become too immersed in this story for my own good, lol. i put a lot of effort into this last part but i still don’t feel entirely satisfied :/ but i hope it’s alright! (you can tell that i like platonic chensoo in this, haha.)
> 
> once again, thank you so much for reading this huge thing! hope you enjoyed it!!! (you’re really welcome to tell me what you think ;v;)


	4. Extras

hi! it’s been almost a year since i wrote this fic, and looking back at it i feel like it’s probably the best fic i’ve written to this date. i’ve also received a lot of nice response to this, which i am very happy about! so i decided to upload this chapter with extras, which consist of some old notes i found on my phone and an extra drabble! (i’ve put them in that order so you can just skip to the drabble if you wanna)

actually, the main reason to why i’m posting this extra chapter is because liquid love was nominated for the 2016 exo fan fiction awards!!! i hadn’t heard of them before, but i’m extremely flattered that someone thought my fic was good enough to be considered one of the best of 2016... it was nominated in the category ‘best chen fic’, which is obviously the most important category (if you haven’t noticed it already i’m huge jongdae stan lol). i just want to thank the one(s?) who nominated the fic and everyone else for reading and liking it ;v; therefore, i’m posting this little extra thing!

you can find out more about the 2016 exo fic awards on [aff](http://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/1178603/2016-exo-fan-fiction-awards-exo-awards) and [livejournal](http://exoficawards.livejournal.com/)  


 

  
1 - notes: this consists of two things; some not-too-serious character profiles i wrote for myself when planning the fic, and a few notes concerning things i didn’t add in the actual fic because they were unimportant (but might still be a bit interesting idk?)

  
Jongdae Kim  
the first of the two main characters is a cunning boy who in spite of being a good student often finds himself in detention  
house: Slytherin  
year: 6  
likes: sweets and pranking Chanyeol  
sexuality: not you  
fun fact: his friends call him Dae or JD

Chanyeol Park  
the second main character had just moved to the UK when he started Hogwarts, but the language was no problem for him as he quickly made friends with the help of his spontaneous attitude  
house: Gryffindor  
year: 6  
likes: Quidditch and everything muggle-related  
sexuality: believes himself to be straight since the thought of anything else hasn’t ever crossed his mind  
fun fact: enjoys the subject of transfiguration despite being completely useless at it

Hyuna Kim  
one of Jongdae’s two closest friends and known as one of the most attractive girls in school  
house: Slytherin  
year: 6  
likes: dancing and cute girls  
sexuality: yes  
fun fact: immediately decided she and Jongdae should be friends when finding out that both of them were placed in the same house and had the same family name

Amber Liu  
Chanyeol’s best friend who is 200 times cooler than him and knows everyone in the entire school  
house: Gryffindor  
year: 6  
likes: strange animals and good jokes  
sexuality: bi  
fun fact: she is muggleborn and still manages to find new things about the world of magic to be amazed by every day

Kris Wu  
Jongdae’s other close friend and ever-popular captain of the Slytherin Quidditch team  
house: Slytherin  
year: 7  
likes: Quidditch  
sexuality: Quidditch  
fun fact: Quidditch

Kyungsoo Do  
a rather quiet and lonesome housemate of Jongdae’s, who happens to be the best potions student in the entire school  
house: Slytherin  
year: 5  
likes: potions ~~and drama~~  
sexuality: BYE-sexual (get it?? get it??? hahahha hilarious. comedy)  
fun fact: pretends not to care but actually finds the conflict between Jongdae and Chanyeol quite interesting

  
extra stuff i never got to write in the actual fic:

\- as mentioned in the first chapter, chanyeol is hugely fascinated with all things from the muggle world. amber, his best friend, happens to be muggleborn. you can guess what a lot of their conversations must be like

\- both chanyeol and amber have care of magical creatures as an elective and amber loves strange creatures, the stranger they are the better. chanyeol thinks they’re all adorable, no matter how malicious they might be

\- jongdae and hyuna became friends on the first day of school just after the sorting hat ceremony. after “kim, hyuna!” came “kim, jongdae!” and they both ended up in slytherin. therefore a lot of people thought they were siblings, even though they had never met before. hyuna saw it as a sign for them to become friends and instantly approached jongdae.

\- kris started school a year later than his peers because his magical abilities didn’t start showing until he was 12

\- as a result of chanyeol and jongdae hanging out more as bfs, their friends start interacting with each other too. especially amber and hyuna are pretty fond of each other ;-)

\- they mostly leave jongdae and chanyeol on their own though, since they don’t want to put up with watching them being all affectionate with each other

\- jongdae introduces kyungsoo to chanyeol. kyungsoo, as expected, finds him somewhat annoying

  


  


2 - drabble (i apologise for the teeth-rotting fluff in advance)

  
Maybe time actually did fly when you’re having fun.

That was what Jongdae thought as he boarded the Hogwarts Express that sunny day in June, the very last day of his sixth year as a student at Hogwarts. It had really been as if the second term flew by faster than usual. Then again, they said time goes by more quickly as one grows older, but that couldn’t solely be the reason. He had after all had a lot of fun.

Or, well, everything hadn’t been a walk in the park; after his change in relationship with a certain Gryffindor there had been a lot of strange stares, and he had even heard the occasional words of prejudice directed at him. It was silly, really, the amount of attention the news gathered. Why people were interested in other’s private lives Jongdae didn’t and couldn’t understand, however, with the company and support from his friends it had all been alright. Especially the company of one particular person. Chanyeol had always been there to hold his hand, just like he was holding it at the moment as they were making their way through the train. And Jongdae had been there to hold his.

They found an empty compartment after a while and sat down. Kris had accompanied some of his fellow seventh years to spend their last time riding the Hogwarts Express together, and most of Chanyeol’s friends usually didn’t hang out with them when Jongdae was there, probably feeling slightly awkward and in their way. Or maybe they just didn’t want to see them being more or less affectionate. Jongdae didn’t know, and he could not bring himself to care. He was not familiar with them and they did not know him that well either. The only one out of Chanyeol’s friends that would spend time with them was Amber, and that was mainly because she got along well with Hyuna and Kris. Therefore, there were four of them sharing a compartment, he and Chanyeol, and Amber and Hyuna.

The first hours of the journey were pleasant; they all discussed memories of the past term and how exciting it was going to be to enter their seventh year. Chanyeol sat next to Jongdae and kept an arm around his shoulders the entire time, leaning the shorter against his side. Amber and Hyuna did not seem to mind, they were used to the smaller displays of affection between the two. It all calmed Jongdae a bit, and managed to keep his brain from focusing on the negative things. Such as the fact that having summer vacation meant that he would be away from school, his friends, and (most importantly) Chanyeol.

Sure, it would be nice to be able to relax at home for a while, but staying at home also meant staying away from those who really brightened his days. Jongdae supposed they could send each other letters as per usual, and maybe meet up a few times. He and Hyuna had hung out a little the previous summers, but not too much as Jongdae hated the way his family would bother him about her being his girlfriend (and most of all his brother teasingly wondering how someone like Jongdae managed to end up with a girl as pretty as her). The fact that they couldn’t seem to comprehend that Jongdae’s best friend (with emphasis on _friend_ ) happened to be a girl was annoying enough, but he knew things would get worse if they got to know who he really was in a relationship with. Therefore the thought of inviting Chanyeol over scared him a bit, as there was always a risk that his family would notice a thing or two.

Besides, the real problem was that even if he managed to meet up with Chanyeol a few times, it would still not be enough. Jongdae was used to Chanyeol’s company by now, since they would always find a way to spend some time together every day. Now, the only way Chanyeol would be able to accompany him for such a long time was in his own thoughts, which was somewhat embarrassing to admit as it made him sound like some kind of lovesick tool (but was that really far from the truth?). What did he even do the summers before Chanyeol? When Jongdae thought about it, he could remember Chanyeol being in his head from time to time the previous summers too, though for what he thought to be a different reason. He had always wondered things like how Chanyeol spent his summers, where did he live, what did he do? It might just be more proof that Jongdae’d had feelings for him longer than he had originally thought.

“I’m going to miss you”, he whispered to Chanyeol out of the blue, feeling his face heat up; he couldn’t help it, things like that were still really embarrassing to admit. Chanyeol seemed to be of the same sentiments though, since he pulled Jongdae even closer. As Hyuna and Amber appeared to be lost in a conversation concerning if thestrals were real or not (Amber was trying to convince a sceptical Hyuna), Chanyeol barely even bothered to whisper in reply.

“Jongdae”, he instead said in a normal conversational tone, and Jongdae could not stop his face from feeling even hotter. He was perhaps a bit too fond of the moments Chanyeol said his name, even though it happened fairly often and he should have grown used to it by now. The fact that he was almost the only person who called him by his actual given name and not a nickname was probably to blame. It made their relationship feel even more special, somehow. Not to mention Chanyeol’s perfect pronunciation, and the way his name sounded when articulated by the deep, somewhat husky voice.

“You know I’m gonna miss you too”, Chanyeol followed up after he was sure he had caught Jongdae’s attention, “a lot.”

Jongdae sighed and snuggled closer to Chanyeol, the latter’s warmth and familiar scent comforting him. It was slightly embarrassing to be so affectionate right in front of their two friends, but this were their last hours together before going to their separate homes so Jongdae wanted to make the best of it.

“Don’t be so gloomy, it’s not like we won’t be able to meet each other for the whole summer”, Chanyeol spoke up again, trying to remain as optimistic as ever, “we’ll visit each other, okay? I’m sure you can even stay at my house for a couple of days if you want to! And if that doesn’t work, we can still send each other letters! You promise to write?”

“I promise”, Jongdae confirmed, but Chanyeol made a sound of dissatisfaction.

“You have to do the pinky promise thing”, he said and raised a hand with his little finger sticking out. Jongdae snorted at his boyfriend’s antics but still hooked his finger with Chanyeol’s. Chanyeol took the chance to grab onto Jongdae’s entire hand, holding it tightly while drawing soothing circles with his thumb on the back of it. Jongdae recognised the action, it was something Chanyeol did from time to time. It would be a lie to say he didn’t like it.

“It’s going to be alright”, Chanyeol then said, and Jongdae wasn’t sure who he was talking to anymore. It made him even more doubtful when Chanyeol repeated the phrase quietly, this time in Korean. Maybe he was also a bit worried about not being able to meet as often as they’d like. Jongdae made a humming sound of agreement nonetheless.

What happened next was that Chanyeol leaned closer, resting his head against Jongdae’s.

“Jongdae”, he then repeated in a whisper, and now his voice was so close Jongdae could not help but shiver slightly. It was an established fact: Chanyeol’s voice was hot. Especially when he was whispering Jongdae’s name a few centimetres from the mentioned’s ear.

“… _I like you so much_ ”, he continued and Jongdae thought that if anyone else was saying the same sort of cheesy thing he would most likely have scrunched his nose in disgust, but this was Chanyeol telling him this and it just made him feel warm all over, “ _… so much._ ”

Chanyeol said all of this in Korean, which was something he did at times when he didn’t want anyone else to understand. What he said was not really a secret, but it was pretty affectionate and the fact that it was only the two of them who could understand made it feel more intimate. Those were things shared only between them, that nobody else would be able to know. Kyungsoo had never been taught the language as his parents weren’t Korean, and while Hyuna’s family was part Korean she hadn’t ever learnt it either. Jongdae could admit his own Korean skills were far from perfect, but the things Chanyeol would say were more or less basic, some of them things he had heard before and others simple enough for him to understand without needing the aid of a severe linguistic calculation.

“ _I like you too_ ”, Jongdae replied in his best Korean, and Chanyeol’s grip on his hand tightened for a second.

“ _You’re so cute_ ”, the latter said affectionately, and even though Jongdae couldn’t see his expression from the way he was leaning against him he was able to hear the smile in Chanyeol’s voice. Unfortunately, he couldn’t enjoy it for long since he heard a whisper of “What are they even saying?”, and when he looked up Jongdae saw that both Hyuna and Amber had their gazes directed towards them. Feeling severely embarrassed, Jongdae quickly looked down at his hands again.

“Uh, if you want to, we can leave you guys alone”, Amber said somewhat awkwardly, which was understandable given the situation. Neither Jongdae or Chanyeol managed to answer though, as Hyuna immediately rose to her feet.

“Yeah, come on”, she said to Amber, “let’s find some other place to sit.”

She grabbed Amber’s hand, which the latter looked a little surprised by, and uttered a “Have fun!” before leaving the compartment. Jongdae felt his face grow hotter because of the comment and the ways it could be interpreted, but he appreciated the action nonetheless.

“That was unexpected”, Chanyeol uttered after a few seconds of silence, “but I’m not complaining.”

Jongdae backed away slightly to be able to see Chanyeol’s face. The latter turned towards him with somewhat rosy cheeks and that dumb but adorable smile that Jongdae had too big a soft spot for.

“It’s nice that we at least get to spend this time together before we part ways”, Chanyeol said.

“'Part ways’, is this a nineteenth century romance novel?” Jongdae commented and Chanyeol elbowed him lightly.

“You know what I mean”, he responded, “anyway, my mum’s picking me up, so if you’d like you can meet her. We can ask if it’s okay for you to stay at our place sometime.”

“Oh, okay, sure”, Jongdae replied, the suggestion taking him by surprise. “I’ll probably have to ask my parents too”, he added with a grimace.

“It’ll be fine. I think. Also, I’m sure mum’s going to like you. I’ve mentioned you… a few times.”

Chanyeol blushed slightly and looked down. He had probably mentioned him more than a few times, Jongdae thought delightedly.

“You have?”

“Yeah, I mean, for instance, back in December I had to since I asked her for advice on what to give you for Christmas”, Chanyeol explained and Jongdae recalled him having mentioned that his mother had recommended that book. “But I haven’t said anything about… y'know. That we’re, um, going out. Or whatever.”

Chanyeol looked a bit embarrassed, and Jongdae smiled at him. He knew how Chanyeol felt, he hadn’t told his parents about that either. The mere thought of it was terrifying.

“That’s okay, I haven’t either. I don’t know how my parents would feel about that”, he said and Chanyeol smiled back empathetically.

“Yeah, I just thought I should tell you so you don’t, like, mention anything about that when you meet my mum.”

Jongdae rolled his eyes.

“What do you think I would say - 'Hello, my name is Jongdae Kim and I’m in love with your son’?”

“No, not at all, but I was just-” Chanyeol started but suddenly stopped himself from speaking further, his wide eyes fixated on Jongdae.

“What?” Jongdae asked and bit his lip nervously, what did he do now?

“Ah, sorry, b-but you…” Chanyeol lowered his gaze, looking down at his hands with a small smile on his lips. “You said… you were in l-love…”

It was then, with a hammering heart, that Jongdae understood. He was suddenly torn between feeling extremely embarrassed for what he had let slip and gushing over how cute Chanyeol’s reaction had been. The L word, L for Love that is (and not the word Hyuna would use the letter to refer to), was not something he had used before while talking to Chanyeol. Only in his head, or he might have mentioned it to Kyungsoo once. But that was it. Jongdae was well aware of his feelings, and he was sure Chanyeol knew too, but actually admitting them out loud was different from just referring to them in his thoughts. To his defence, Jongdae had tried. Several times. Ever since that day a few months ago when he confessed he had tried to actually say the word, but with no success. Except for now, that is. It was a shame it was because of a mere slip of the tongue.

“I… Yeah. Thought you knew that. Why else would I be in this sort of relationship with you?” Jongdae attempted to explain, perhaps coming off a bit too defensive. Chanyeol didn’t seem to mind, though. At least he didn’t comment on it.

“I guess, but it’s just, you haven’t said it…? Not in that way, anyway”, he said instead, speaking softly.

Jongdae swallowed nervously.

“Sorry if I made this weird.”

“No, no, you didn’t do anything bad!” Chanyeol hurried to exclaim, “I liked it. Loved it, actually. I, um, I’m in love with you too.”

It was not the first time Chanyeol said that but it still made Jongdae ridiculously excited. He had to admit, though, that he was a tiny bit envious of Chanyeol’s ability to be so open with his feelings.

“I know”, Jongdae replied with a smile, sneakily placing his right hand on Chanyeol’s thigh. Chanyeol smiled back, leaning a bit closer, and it was as if Jongdae finally realised how close the two of them actually were. A quick glance at Chanyeol’s lips was all it took for Jongdae to feel sweaty, and he tried not to give in to his impulses; perhaps Chanyeol wanted to continue their conversation. It was difficult, though, as the taller’s pretty mouth looked almost more inviting than ever. Jongdae instead settled for licking his own lips, suddenly feeling a bit awkward.

However, Chanyeol noticed him and seemed to understand, since he did what Jongdae had tried to keep himself from doing: leaning in to kiss the other on the lips. It was very brief, a blink of the eyes and Chanyeol was back in his original position, the only difference being that his cheeks were now faintly red.

“… A goodbye kiss?” Chanyeol explained, but it sounded more like a question. His poorly hidden embarrassment was quite adorable, but it didn’t keep Jongdae from feeling a bit disappointed. He had expected more.

“You call that a goodbye kiss? That was barely a peck”, he therefore stated, challenging Chanyeol to try again. The latter only seemed to blush harder at the response.

“Um, I- I wasn’t sure you-” Chanyeol awkwardly began, but did not finish as Jongdae rolled his eyes, raised his hand from Chanyeol’s thigh to reach around him and place it on the back of his neck. He then leaned closer, once again connecting their lips to Chanyeol’s slight surprise.

It would not be a lie if Jongdae stated that kissing Chanyeol was one of his favourite things to do. Though, he probably wouldn’t actually say it out loud, as it was a pretty embarrassing fact. But it was a fact nonetheless. And it was something he wished he was able to do more often.

Even though they had been a couple for a few months, Jongdae and Chanyeol were still a bit awkward at times. They cuddled, and kissed every now and then, but nothing more (even though Jongdae ~~desperately~~ wanted to). That very first kiss had been a little (or more than a little) racy and they hadn’t yet dared to go as far as that. Jongdae wasn’t sure how Chanyeol felt about that, if it was something he wanted to do, and perhaps he was too nervous to make the move himself. But he knew kissing, in a more innocent manner, was fine with the both of them and because of that the sensation of Chanyeol’s lips against his was in a way familiar to Jongdae. It felt so right, almost in a strange sense, like it was there that they belonged. He knew Chanyeol felt something similar, because when he glanced up he saw Chanyeol’s eyes smiling at him. With that sight etched in his mind, Jongdae closed his own eyes in satisfaction and breathed out through his nostrils.

Chanyeol’s lips were warm, and they were softly brushing up against Jongdae’s own, it was almost more like a series of quick pecks than a long, consistent kiss. Although, said pecks were less brief than before, as they soon developed into something more reminiscent of soft nibbles. Jongdae physically felt his heartbeat speed up with excitement; Chanyeol was really teasing him now. He tried to match the rhythm of the kisses, while sliding his hand up Chanyeol’s neck to gently grab a handful of hair on the back of the latter’s head. In response, Chanyeol released a small groan, pulling his arms around Jongdae to hold him even closer. It was like Jongdae was completely surrounded by Chanyeol’s warm body, and it made him relax.

And with that, the kisses decreased in frequency but instead became longer, also making the blood in Jongdae’s veins feel hotter. Chanyeol breathed out a warm puff of air that tickled Jongdae’s lips, before capturing the latter’s upper lip between his own, sucking lightly on it. Because of that Jongdae felt a tinge of adventurousness and in return opened his mouth to let his teeth graze gently over Chanyeol’s lower lip, unintentionally making Chanyeol’s breath hitch. As they parted to inhale some much needed air, Jongdae opened his eyes to see Chanyeol smiling embarrassedly, both his cheeks and ears a pretty shade of pink.

“Damn”, commented Jongdae, his head feeling oddly light.

“Yeah”, Chanyeol agreed.

“You know, if you were a Dementor, I’d become a criminal just to make you kiss me”, Jongdae then, stupidly enough, voiced out loud. It was a terrible pickup line, and he immediately felt ashamed after saying it, but Chanyeol still giggled softly.

“You’re too cute”, he replied appreciatively, then giggled some more. Jongdae smiled, his heart still beating at an increasingly higher rate. This made him tilt his head and lean in again, Chanyeol responding instantly and letting their lips glide smoothly against each other.

This time, Chanyeol wasn’t even hiding his eagerness and stuck out his tongue slightly to run it over Jongdae’s lip, immediately triggering Jongdae’s fingers to grab tight onto the closest thing they could in surprise. This happened to be Chanyeol’s hair, however since it was done a tiny bit more roughly than before it resulted in Chanyeol’s head being pulled back to some degree.

“Sorry”, Jongdae instinctively whispered, but all Chanyeol managed to reply was a heavy pant of breath. Taking the chance as Chanyeol’s head was still tilted back, Jongdae placed a kiss on his chin instead, which soon turned into a string of gentle kisses around Chanyeol’s mouth and chin area. As a consequence, Chanyeol’s lips left Jongdae’s as well and travelled upwards, letting them leave wet kisses on Jongdae’s cheeks. Jongdae’s entire body felt warm and dizzy, the immense bliss of the moment taking over him.

But, of course, if you’re at the top of the world something eventually has to bring you down, and it was then he was really hit by the realisation that this might be the last kiss the two shared for a while. The thought of not being able to experience such a feeling as often, or maybe not at all, during the entire summer was cold, especially in contrast to the warm feeling of happiness he’d just had. Not wanting it to take control, Jongdae moved his lips towards Chanyeol’s and kissed him in something that could only be described as desperation, sadly enough.

When the two took a break to catch some air, both breathing more heavily than Jongdae had expected, it was evident that Chanyeol had also had a similar realisation. He leaned his forehead against Jongdae’s and with a shiver Jongdae heard him whisper,

“I am really going to miss you.”

  


Eventually, the train reached its destination. Therefore, Hyuna and Amber entered their compartment once again to pick up their bags. Jongdae and Chanyeol, who had spent the rest of the journey cuddling silently, followed them off the train.

“Are your parents picking you up?” asked Chanyeol casually, in an obvious attempt to make them think about something else for a minute. Even though he already knew how to answer that question, Jongdae looked around at the crowded platform 9 ¾. Amber was meeting up with her sister to head home together, and Hyuna seemed to have parts of her extended family waiting for her. Kris was standing in a big group of post-seventh-years and when Jongdae glanced his way the former made a gesture which was probably meant to imitate writing, signalling that he expected them to send each other letters during the summer. Jongdae nodded in reply and continued to follow Chanyeol, who was eyeing him curiously.

“No, they’re too busy… I live a bit away, so I usually have to take the muggle train.”

Chanyeol’s eyes widened.

“The muggle train?! You’ve done it multiple times? Have you taken one of those with _two levels_?” he asked excitedly, making Jongdae smile. He didn’t get the chance to answer, though, as Chanyeol was spotted by someone.

“ _Chanyeol-ah!_ ”

“ _Mum!_ ” Chanyeol automatically responded, looking up to spot his mother awaiting him. Jongdae felt somewhat awkward following him, after all he and Chanyeol’s mother didn’t know each other, but since Chanyeol had insisted he might as well. Hopefully Chanyeol had been right in his statement that his mother would probably like him.

Jongdae recognised Chanyeol’s mother, which might be a bit strange, but he had seen her a few times at the station before. He had always been a bit curious about Chanyeol’s personal life (though he used to tell himself it was strictly for pranking purposes), and therefore Jongdae had observed him during some of the previous years, wondering what kind of family he had. He knew that Chanyeol’s mother was a respected witch thanks to her work making potions in the medical field, but that was about it. She was rather short, which had been a slight surprise the first time Jongdae saw her, since Chanyeol was so tall.

The height difference was made even clearer when Chanyeol had reached his mother and they both hugged. Jongdae stood at the side, feeling a bit like a waste of space, trying not to listen in on their conversation. That was, until Chanyeol finally introduced him.

“ _This is Kim Jongdae_ ”, he said, in _Korean_. Jongdae swallowed.

“ _Hello! Nice to meet you_ ”, Chanyeol’s mother said and bowed, and Jongdae immediately did the same, not wanting to be rude.

“ _Nice to meet you, too_ ”, he replied nervously, this was reminding him of the few times he had been at family gatherings and had to greet some of his older relatives.

Chanyeol’s mother then said something Jongdae could only interpret as “Chanyeol has talked about you”, and he therefore nodded, not knowing what to say. Hopefully Chanyeol hadn’t mentioned the fact that Jongdae had claimed to hate him several of their previous years at Hogwarts.

What happened next was that Chanyeol’s mum asked him something, which Jongdae didn’t exactly understand. Automatically uttering a “Huh?” did not help much as she only repeated the same phrase, not at all making things any clearer for Jongdae. He desperately glanced at Chanyeol who was looking at him expectantly, and Jongdae noted that the taller’s lips were slightly more puffy (probably due to certain activities they had done on the train). Hopefully his mother didn’t notice it.

Obviously, Jongdae’s hint that he needed assistance was not making its way to Chanyeol, and therefore he moved his gaze towards Chanyeol’s mum again.

“S-sorry, I didn’t understand that”, he admitted in English, “I’m not that good at speaking Korean.”

Nervously awaiting the response, Jongdae did not expect it to come from both of the others.

“You’re not?!” Chanyeol exclaimed while his mother smiled pleasantly and said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” Jongdae noticed her smile was somewhat similar to Chanyeol’s.

“N-no, it’s okay! I can speak a little, and understand some, but that’s it. I should’ve told you immediately.”

Chanyeol’s mother looked like she was about to say something, however, Chanyeol managed to speak up before her.

“I never noticed any flaws in your speech”, he said, his eyes comically wide. “B-but… does that mean you didn’t understand all the, um, you know, things I’ve said to you…?”

Chanyeol was blushing slightly while looking almost bewildered. Jongdae could understand him if he felt embarrassed, some of the things he had said were pretty private so it was obvious he wasn’t going to repeat them in front of his mother.

“No, I’m not _completely_ hopeless… Uh, just so you know, I’ve understood every single thing you’ve said. Otherwise I would’ve told you”, Jongdae admitted, face also feeling a bit warm, and Chanyeol visibly relaxed. He chose not to tell Chanyeol that most of the things he had said were _basic_ enough for him to be able to understand them.

When Jongdae turned back he noticed that Chanyeol’s mum was eyeing them curiously, but thankfully she did not ask anything. Instead she said,

“I asked you if you’re interested in Potions, since Chanyeol mentioned something about that before.”

She had a slight accent, but her English was grammatically flawless and it was obvious she spoke the language with ease. Jongdae supposed that pronunciation of a language was easier to internalise when you’re still young, as Chanyeol had gotten rid of his Korean accent years ago. He wondered if he himself had an accent when he was speaking Korean, which seemed likely, but at the same time Chanyeol had said that he hadn’t at all noticed anything off about it.

Then, Jongdae realised he had yet to answer the question and nodded hastily.

“Yes, I am, it’s my favourite subject”, he added, and could spot Chanyeol smiling goofily at him in the corner of his eye.

“You should come visit us sometime, then. I have an entire room dedicated to potion making. It’s not all too big, but you might still find it interesting”, Chanyeol’s mother said, and Jongdae instinctively glanced at Chanyeol who gave him a look.

“Actually, we were going to ask if he could come visit us a couple of times during the summer”, Chanyeol explained, and his mother smiled.

“Of course he can!” she said, then turned towards Jongdae and added, “If you want to, that is.”

“Y-yeah, I do, I’ll just have to ask my parents first”, Jongdae replied. The fact that he had to ask his parents for permission felt a little childish, but he knew they would worry if he just disappeared off to somewhere without telling them.

“Well, just write and tell me whenever you wanna come over”, Chanyeol said and patted Jongdae awkwardly on the back, “See you then.”

Jongdae was almost automatically hit with the urge to kiss Chanyeol goodbye, but he supposed they already did that on the train. After all, they couldn’t do it in front of his mother. Though, it felt a bit underwhelming to just be patted on the back and nothing more. Especially since they might not meet for a while.

“It was nice to meet you, Jongdae”, Chanyeol’s mum said, then directed her arm at Chanyeol. “ _Shall we?_ ”

Chanyeol nodded and grabbed his trunk with his left hand, and his mother’s hand with his right. He just managed to utter a “Bye, Jongdae” before his mother Apparated the two of them and they disappeared from Jongdae’s view.

Jongdae had to admit he was a bit envious. Neither of them had turned seventeen yet, so they weren’t allowed to use Apparition, but at least Chanyeol had his mother picking him up. Jongdae had to take the stupid muggle train to reach his hometown.

However, the prospect of perhaps getting to meet with Chanyeol and even visit his house during their vacation made it easier for Jongdae to ignore those small things that temporarily bothered him. Actually, he already felt a whole lot better. Maybe this summer wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

 

 


End file.
